Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 4th September 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

183: Clause 87, page 95, line 5, after “the” insert “up-to-date”
Member’s explanatory statement
The amendments to Clause 87 and Clause 231 in the name of Lord Lansley would give statutory weight to up-to-date local plans and enable the Secretary of State to set out the definition of “up-to-date” and the weight to be given, respectively, to emerging plans or to those no longer up-to-date.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I put on record my interest as chairman of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum, which of course involves me in a wide range of planning and development-related issues.

I want to say a couple of things at the outset. First, I say a big thank you to my Front Bench colleagues for the time and energy that they and officials have given to discussing many of these amendments. I know they have worked hard, including through the recess, for us to try to reach agreements about some of these things: even if we do not, I want to say how much I appreciate the effort they are putting into it. The other thing I want to mention is that all my amendments, even if I might end up disagreeing with my noble friends on the Front Bench, are intended to make the Bill work better and in the spirit of how it is constructed.

That brings me to this first group of amendments, all in my name. In Committee, we had a very interesting discussion about what constitutes an “up-to-date” local plan. Why is this important? It is important because when we reach that part of the Bill and we have a plan-led system, we need to know whether the plan has full effect. Almost by definition, an up-to-date local plan has full effect and an out-of-date local plan has no effect, some effect or a differing weight. An emerging plan also has weight attached to it, but we also do not know precisely how much weight is to be attached. The Government’s answer to this, of course, is terribly simple and was a very compelling reply to the amendments in Committee. It said that an up-to-date plan is a plan that has been adopted within five years of the preceding plan. That is a cliff edge, they said, and a cliff edge does not do: we need something that is more subtle than that and acknowledges that there are plans that go out of date, but they are not much out of date and they are relevant, and we have emerging plans to which weight should be given.

So, we have constructed a set of amendments that inserts the words “up-to-date” in front of “plan”, because if you have a plan-led system and you just say “local plans” and do not refine what you mean by that, it is rather deficient—and we are intending to have a plan-led system. The Government’s arguments are based, in substance, around the proposition that local authorities need to have up-to-date local plans; otherwise, the system will not work effectively. In so far as they do not, the Bill has, as we shall come on to in the next group, the question of national development management policies which, to a large extent, step in in the determination of planning applications in circumstances where a plan is no longer up to date. So, there are undoubted pressures on local authorities to have a local plan that is up to date, but this is not easy.

Although we have a significant slowdown in the number of local plans being progressed by local authorities—not least because of the uncertainties associated with the revision of the National Planning Policy Framework and the uncertainties, frankly, associated with the passage of this legislation, which is not helping the situation—none the less when the Bill goes through and the NPPF is published we need to give greater certainty, and I think statutory weight behind the expression “an up-to-date local plan” gives certainty.

However, it does not solve the problem of a plan being out of date or there being an emerging plan in relation to the existing one. That is why the most important amendment I have suggested in this group is Amendment 187, which gives the Secretary of State a power in regulations to say what constitutes an up-to-date local plan—enabling that term to be defined—and to specify what weight should be attached to plans that are no longer up to date and to emerging plans. I anticipate that my noble friend may reply, perfectly sensibly, that we can do all that in guidance; my point is that we are creating statute and therefore want to give statutory weight to local plans as such and to up-to-date local plans, and to give a statutory framework for the processes by which Ministers determine how up-to-date plans, out-of-date plans and emerging plans are to be considered in relation to the process of determining applications.

When we come on to national development management policies, the interaction between the regulations saying how much weight should be attached to emerging and out-of-date plans and the Government’s specific provisions in the national development management policies is an important one, which would be assisted by placing all these things into regulations—to which Parliament can have regard, which is, frankly, not an insignificant consideration. As we have encountered a number of times in the planning considerations in this Bill, where the National Planning Policy Framework and guidance to local planning authorities are concerned, Parliament plays, in effect, no role.

We have a chance now to say that we want a role—that we want to see the regulations and, in exceptional circumstances, to dispute them. The key thing is that Parliament should at least have a chance to see and debate them, and to give statutory weight and legislative backing to the meaning of local plans as they appear at the heart of the plan-making process. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, as this is the first time I have spoken at this stage of the Bill, I draw your Lordships’ attention to my professional and property interests.

I strongly support what the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has put forward, for reasons which tangentially affect me to some extent where I live, down in Sussex, where no one could quite work out whether a duly made neighbourhood plan was still extant in the absence of a current local plan. This seems to be one of those things where unforeseen consequences have come about. As the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has mentioned, making local plans and keeping them up to date is certainly not an unonerous burden; it is a process of constant churn in which at a certain date it becomes law, if you like, and at another date it suddenly drops off the cliff edge, as he referred to it, but the neighbourhood plans do not necessarily coincide with that same cycle.

It is even more of a problem for communities to make their local plans, because they do not have the same sorts of resources. A lot of it is done by voluntary hard work and endeavour. Yet in areas where a neighbourhood plan is still extant but the local plan has gone out of date, the whole thing is left in limbo. I absolutely buy the point that we need greater certainty and that some parliamentary scrutiny of this process is needed, at least to be able to consider a regulation.

Whether it is right that the Secretary of State should have quite such extensive and untrammelled powers to do this is probably a matter that the two sides of the House will never quite agree on. I think there is a valid point about how far one takes that. However, this degree of uncertainty is highly corrosive and is very damaging to confidence in the local plan and to coherence and trust in the process at neighbourhood and local plan level. I warmly support and thank the noble Lord for raising this very important group of amendments.

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[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I have great sympathy for the intention behind the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Lansley. The value in having up-to-date plans in place is something we can all agree on and is a goal which several of the measures in this Bill are designed to support. Where I must part company with my noble friend is on the best way of achieving that.

These amendments would create a hard cliff edge for policies in plans. A local plan or a neighbourhood plan could be departed from only if there are “strong reasons”, or—if it passes its sell-by date—would be relegated to being just a material consideration. This would risk undermining the important policy safeguards in plans, which could allow the wrong development in the wrong places. Within any plan, some individual policies are likely to have continuing importance and relevance, irrespective of the actual base date of the plan. For example, policies which set the boundaries of important designated areas, such as the green belt, are expected to endure for some time. Because of this, it is a well-established principle that planning decisions rely on a judgment about which policies are relevant at the point of making a decision. If we created the sort of all-or-nothing cliff edge that these amendments imply, we would put this pragmatism at risk and could undermine important protections.

None of this is to excuse slow plan-making, and I agree entirely with my noble friend that we must do more to get up-to-date plans in place. We have a comprehensive set of actions to do just that. The national development management policies will mean that plans have to contain fewer generic policies than they do now; our digital and procedural reforms in the Bill will make it easier to prepare and approve policies; there will be more proactive intervention through the new gateway checks on emerging plans; and the Bill also bolsters the intervention powers that may be used as a last resort. Our current consultation on plan-making reiterates the Government’s aim that future plans should be produced in 30 months, not years.

We expect the new plan-making system to go live in late 2024. There will be a requirement on local planning authorities to start work on new plans by, at the latest, five years after the adoption of their previous plan and to adopt the new plan within 30 months. Under the new proposals, the Secretary of State will retain existing powers to intervene if authorities fail, and these include the ability to make formal directions and, ultimately, to take steps into an authority’s shoes and take over plan-making responsibilities. The plan also provides a new option for the Secretary of State where authorities are failing: local plan commissioners could be appointed by the Secretary of State at any stage of the new plan-making process.

However, we are going consulting. We are asking for views on the proposals to implement the parts of the Bill that relate to plan-making ,and to make plans simpler, faster to prepare and more accessible. That consultation opened in July and will close on 18 October. If any noble Lords would like to see it, it is available on GOV.UK.

The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, asked whether neighbourhood plans will still be relevant without a local plan. They will: they are still relevant if the planning application is relevant to the neighbourhood plan.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, asked about the five-year land supply requirement. We have proposed removing that requirement only where plans are less than five years old. This will be an incentive to keep plans up to date by reducing the threat of speculative development where local authorities have done the right thing in having an up-to-date local plan.

It is important that we give these reforms a chance to work, rather than introducing measures that would complicate decision-making and could weaken protections. Therefore, although I understand the intention behind these amendments, I hope that my noble friend has been persuaded to withdraw Amendment 183.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken on this group of amendments. I am particularly grateful for the support that noble Lords from all sides of the House have given to the principles behind my amendment.

My noble friend the Minister said that she is sympathetic to what these amendments set out to achieve. I am slightly surprised, because she continued to say that I am looking for something with a cliff edge, as it were. The whole point of Amendment 187 is to give Ministers the regulation-making power to graduate the cliff edge and show the steps up to and down from it. At the same time, my noble friend is trying to use cliff edges. She is saying, “Well, it’s five years, then something happens, then two and half years is the limit on the time available”. Sometimes, these timetables serve a purpose. My noble friend is right to say that local plan-making needs to be accelerated; setting these timetables is clearly a part of that.

This is interesting, because we are not necessarily debating the five-year housing supply elsewhere. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, made a good point. My noble friend the Minister said that the Government are getting rid of the five-year supply requirement in relation to the plan itself. So, in effect, the local plan can say, “Well, this is our housing requirement, and this is how we are meeting it”. However, if you go beyond five years and fall off the proverbial cliff edge, and if a local planning authority does not maintain an annual statement of how it will meet the housing requirement it has identified for its area for the five years ahead, it will in effect see a housing delivery test come in—and it will fail that test. We would return to the situation where developers are able to come in, and that may or may not be a bad thing; but it is not as simple as saying, “We have a housing delivery test”, “We don’t have a housing delivery test”, “We have a different housing delivery test”, “We don’t have the buffer”, and so on.

This issue is all part of the problem that my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham and I will return to in our debate on a later group of amendments, concerning the lack of constraints on local planning authorities that will get them to the point of delivering on the Government’s housing targets. The watering down of the housing delivery test is a significant part of that, as is the buffer built into it in trying to meet the deficiencies in supply by local planning authorities.

My noble friend the Minister made some reasonable points. However, the whole point of this amendment is that we need certainty, as my noble friend Lord Deben rightly said. We need that to be achieved in the wake of this consultation on plan-making. It is not about cliff edges; it is about understanding what an emerging plan means in relation to an existing plan and setting that out in very clear terms. Past efforts have not succeeded. For example, Regulation 10A of the town and country planning regulations sets out that a review must start within five years. We saw the results of that. A local planning authority in my area initiated a review on five years plus one day and said, “We don’t really need to review all of this. We’ll just look at the one thing that we don’t like, which is the housing supply number, and we’ll review it and lower it”—and that was the end of it. The planning inspector said that they did not have the power to say that there should be a more wide-ranging review.

I hope—and believe—that this will be sorted in this consultation on plan-making. However, my point, which I think that my noble friend completely accords with, is that even if we do not do this in regulations—and I will not press the point—it must be done, with clarity and soon; otherwise, we will move to a new system into which all the past uncertainties will be reimported, with local developers and planning authorities going head to head as they have in the past and which has not been helpful. We want to see them using the certainty of the system to manage the supply of housing more effectively in the future.

With that thought of hope over experience, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 183 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

Although our preference would be to avoid altogether the centralising tendency in planning that NDMPs represent, our view is that Amendment 190 provides a much greater reassurance that they will be properly consulted on and scrutinised before implementation. For that reason, if the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, decides to divide the House on her amendment, she will have our support.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 189 in this group also relates to national development management policies. Following a number of debates in Committee in which we tried to explore what national development management policies would look like, I thought it might be helpful to table an amendment that sets what the demarcation is between what NDMPs should and should not be doing. In the spirit of helping my friends on the Front Bench, I think my amendment aims to do what Ministers intend to do, which is not to pre-empt the role of a local planning authority in determining the policies for the use of land in their area for various purposes and the policies to be applied in relation to the overall structure of development in their area; I think they wish to ensure that there is consistency in plan-making and reduction of complexity in the process of determining applications.

My starting point was to look at the National Planning Policy Framework, as I did on a couple of occasions in Committee. Many of its chapters are essentially divided into two parts. The first asks what the policy is in relation to, say, heritage assets, combating flood risks or green belt designation. There then tends to be a secondary series of paragraphs relating to what happens when an application is received and how it is to be determined in relation to that subject. That is true for heritage assets, the green belt and so on. The simplest and most straightforward is the chapter on the green belt, where there are several paragraphs about how an application for planning permission inside the green belt should be dealt with, as distinct from preceding paragraphs that set out the processes by which plan-making should seek to establish the boundaries of the green belt. Similar things happen in other chapters.

That is why I went to the Bill and saw that, at the moment, the legislation gives Ministers the power to set national development management policies of such breadth that they could supplant many of the plan-making and policy-orientated decisions of local authorities. I do not think that is the intention. What I think they are setting out to do is as I have put it in the amendment, so that in Clause 88, which says what a national development management policy is, it would say that an NDMP

“is a policy (however expressed) of the Secretary of State in relation to”,

and then my amendment would insert,

“the processes or criteria by which any determination is to be made under the planning Acts, as regards”

the use of land in England, et cetera. That would mean that it would be confined to the processes and criteria for determining applications, meaning that it is not a policy that can replace a determination of the policy towards the land use and development of land in an area. That is the prerogative of the local planning authority.

I think that is what Ministers are setting out to do and I think that is how the benefits are to be derived, but it is not what the statute says. The statute gives Ministers much wider powers. As my noble friend Lord Deben said in his helpful intervention, we do not know what future Ministers might think; they might think something much more intrusive and much more pre-emptive of the policy-making decisions of local planning authorities. If you take over plan-making in a plan-led system then you effectively take over the allocation of land and development right across the country; you can effectively control it. In my view, we need to be very clear. I hoped that Ministers would find Amendment 189 a helpful clarification, and I put it into this group on that basis.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, the facts around our concerns regarding NDMPs have been very well expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, and the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, so I will not waste the time of the House repeating them. The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, shows the real dilemma around content and demarcation with regard to NDMPs and local plans. Together, these amendments demonstrate just how much uncertainty and potential for conflict there is regarding this bold and radical change. These concerns are expressed across all parties and sectors, which is why I believe that the amendment in my name is crucial to allaying some of these very legitimate concerns.

My amendment would ensure that NDMPs receive full public and parliamentary scrutiny. It was drafted by the Better Planning Coalition and is supported by the RTPI, the National Trust, CPRE, Friends of the Earth, the TCPA and many other organisations. National development management plans could and should be a bold and positive possibility to reform the system radically, or they could be a centralising power grab designed to minimise the voice of the community. Whichever view noble Lords and those organisations take individually, what unites them is that they agree that this is an important amendment for one very strong and principled reason.

As drafted, NDMPs come with no minimum public consultation or parliamentary scrutiny requirements. Please just let that sink in: there is no agreed consultation and scrutiny process enshrined in the legislation. This greatly heightens the risk that they will turn out to be a power grab rather than a positive reform.

To add further to our concern, and as has been expressed by other noble Lords, the contents of NDMPs are as yet undefined. We have a blank page. We may well be able to guess some of the content from some of the NPPF consultation, but ostensibly we still do not know what it is going to be.

It is worth reminding ourselves of what Clause 88 says. It states:

“A ‘national development management policy’ is a policy (however expressed) of the Secretary of State in relation to the development or use of land in England”.


Note those very powerful words, “however expressed”. We are used to being asked to agree a process of accepting policies of national importance when we do not know what they are and there is no formal right to parliamentary scrutiny. As of now, those policies could relate to absolutely anything. We may have some familiarity with them, but what we do not know is whether they are going to be tweaked, changed a bit or replaced by completely new policies. The level of uncertainty is just not acceptable.

The Minister will no doubt say that Clause 87 imposes an obligation on the Secretary of State to ensure that consultation, which is not defined, takes place on NDMPs, but—and it is a big but—the legislation also allows Ministers the discretion to define exactly what consultation is appropriate for their policies. This cannot be right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my past as chairman of the Climate Change Committee merely to say, in very short terms, why I think it is important to take seriously the way in which the planning Acts affect decisions made by the whole nation when it comes to dealing with climate change, both adaptation and mitigation. There is no doubt that we will have to make all our decisions through that lens, because that is the only way we are going to be able to fight the existential threat we now face. No one who has looked at the effects of climate change this year, all over the world, can possibly misunderstand the reality of the threat. If we are going to deal with that, it is not just about policy or programmes but action and delivery.

This Government have been extremely good on their policy and programmes. We cannot complain about a Government who have set the best targets in the world, who led the world in Glasgow, who first set a net-zero target for 2050. We really have to accept that this Government have done all those things, but the criticism is delivery. Doing those things is essential. Setting those targets is crucial. Leading the world in all those ways has been a privilege for all of us, but we now have to deliver. In this amendment there is a real chance to do one of the pieces of delivery which is vital.

I say to my noble friend, with whom I have worked for many years, including in the Department for Environment, when we began the journey to where we have got today, imagine putting the word “not” into Amendment 191:

“The Secretary of State must”


not

“have special regard to the mitigation of, and adaptation to”.

Imagine doing the same in sub-paragraph (2):

“When making a planning decision”,


he must not “have special regard”. We would find that utterly unacceptable, because we know perfectly well that this is central to the future of this country and of the world, and we therefore have to have that. No doubt we will be told that the Government have got that. Well, once again—which is why I intervened earlier, in wicked preparation for this one—it is not good enough just to have the intention. We know which road

“is paved with good intentions”,

and that is not a road we ought to travel, although it is the road down which we are all travelling at this moment. Therefore, I say to my noble friend that I very much hope that he will understand why it is crucial for us to make it clear that the planning system must be used throughout its length and breadth to ensure that we make the decisions upon which the future of our children—and, indeed, ourselves, even those as old as I am—really depends.

I finish by saying this. People attack some of the techniques and ways of behaviour of the extremist organisations, and I join them in that. It is not what I believe in. But what I object to is that people do not ask themselves why they are doing it. It is because there is a whole generation that does not believe that the democratic system can deliver what needs to be delivered on climate change, and we in this House and in the other place have got to overcome that. That is why this amendment is so important as part of reassuring and reasserting that the democratic system can deliver and that you do not have to take to the streets, you do not have to behave in the way that all of us deplore; you have instead to accept this kind of amendment. I hope the Government will see why it is crucial.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I intervene for a moment in support of Amendment 191, to which I have added my name, and to say a couple of things, partly by way of reiteration of what the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, said in what I thought was a very capable exposition of the reasoning and purpose behind the amendment.

First, of course we already have in legislation, and have had for some time, a duty in plan making to contribute to the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change, but I am afraid it is not doing enough. That much is evident, and what the noble Lord said, which is absolutely right, is that some local planning authorities who want to do the most to change their approach to plan making and spatial development in order to mitigate and adapt to climate change are finding that the structure of planning law makes that more difficult.

In resisting the amendment, my noble friends may say that it would lead to litigation. Well, first, it all leads to litigation. Secondly, the problem at the moment is that, for a local planning authority, going down the path of doing the really necessary things to mitigate climate change involves transgressing other objectives under planning law. For example, we can have a big debate about the green belt, but sometimes—as Cambridge’s examination before its local plan process demonstrated—if you really want to make a difference, the structure of development must focus on urban extensions and along public transport corridors—and if you try to do that around London, you hit the green belt. So you have to balance these things.

If we are serious about adaptation to or mitigation of climate change, we must raise it in the hierarchy of considerations—which is exactly what the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, sets out to do. It is not an objection to the amendment that we create a hierarchy that could give rise to challenges; it is its purpose and objective and that is why we should do it.

I will reiterate a second point he made so that noble Lords understand the value of the amendment. It takes a principle presently applied to plan-making and applies it both to the Secretary of State’s policy-making functions, including national development management policies, and to determinations of planning permissions. It puts it right in the midst of the whole structure, from the Secretary of State making policies to local authorities making plans and looking at planning applications and determining them. That is the only way competently to address the range and scale of issues that climate change presents to us. It takes it from policy through to individual decisions, and that is why I think it deserves our support.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as chair of Peers for the Planet and I have a close family member who works in this area. The last two contributions have added to the clear exposition of Amendment 191 put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, so I can say very little.

I will just say this. I seem to have spent the last three years in this Chamber trying to persuade the Government that in every area in which we legislate—pensions, financial services, skills or whatever we are looking at—if we believe that this is a crucial issue, as the Government say and the public support, and we want to keep to the legislative targets we have enacted in statute on environmental issues and climate, we have to will the means as well as the ends and we have to do it in a coherent way.

I know very little about the planning system. What I have learned, through a little bit of personal experience of trying to do something green and through listening to briefings on this issue, is that there is not coherence, consistency or a clear direction from government that goes throughout the whole system, as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said. The reason why so many outside organisations, such as the construction industry, town planners and people who work in local authorities and want to do this, are supportive of this is that they want a clear framework so that everyone is on the same page on the need for action. Of all the areas I talked about where we have made legislative progress, planning is central—so I very much support Amendment 191.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Report stage
Thursday 20th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the government amendments which, as the Minister has said, bring decisions made by the Secretary of State on urban development areas back to Parliament in the form of affirmative resolutions rather than negative resolutions. In my view, which I have expressed frequently, far too much in this enormous Bill is set out in the form of decisions left entirely to the Secretary of State to fill in by way of statutory instruments. Far too often, the only restraint is the wholly inadequate procedure of negative resolutions. I am pleased that the Minister has recognised the overreach in the original drafting and has brought forward amendments to correct that.

In Committee, I expressed general support for the proposition of locally led development corporations, and that was helped on by the Minister’s reassuring words to the effect that the wide discretion given to the Secretary of State in Clause 162 to designate a development corporation is, in practice, entirely conditional on there first being a positive initiative from that locality. That is all the more important in view of the strange reluctance to include town and parish councils in the formal consultation process.

In responding to this debate, I would be very grateful if the Minister could make assurance doubly sure on that point of local initiation and leadership of the new generation of development corporations. I look forward to hearing her reassurance on that point.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, my intervention on this subject will be brief. I did not speak on development corporations in Committee, but I have been following the subject very carefully. In response to this very short debate, or perhaps more appropriately in a subsequent letter, might my noble friend explain to us a little more about how the various forms of development corporations are intended to be deployed?

As far as I can see, in addition to the mayoral development corporations—which are not much affected by this Bill—we will continue to have scope for urban development corporations initiated by the Secretary of State, we will continue to have scope for new town development corporations initiated by the Secretary and we will have locally led urban development corporations and locally led new town development corporations that may be established at the initiative of local authorities under this Bill. By my count, we have five different forms of development corporations.

There is a certain amount of speculation about under what circumstances, in what areas and for what purposes these development corporations may be deployed, and about the Government’s intentions. It would be reassuring to many to hear from the Government about that, and in particular about their presumption that they would proceed, particularly for new towns and new development corporations, by reference to those that are locally led and arise from local authority proposals, as distinct from continuing to use the powers for the Secretary of State to designate an area and introduce a development corporation at his or her own initiative. It would be jolly helpful to have more flesh on the bones of what these various development corporations look like and how they will be deployed by government.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, those who have heard me speak in this Chamber will know that I am a great fan of development corporations, having grown up in a town that, apart from our historic old town, was created and, for the most part, built by Stevenage Development Corporation. At that time, the innovation of development corporations took a great deal of debate in Parliament to initiate, and we have hopefully moved on a bit towards devolution since the middle of the last century.

If there is to be parliamentary scrutiny of the establishment of development corporations, it is absolutely right that it should be done by the affirmative procedure, so we welcome the movement on that in Amendments 146 and 147, to ensure that the establishment of locally led urban and new town development corporations is drawn to the attention of both Houses, in the same way as those that are not locally led.

We hope that it will be the intention of government to scrutinise only the technical aspects of governance, for example, as it would be entirely against the principles of devolution that the Bill sets out to promote for any Government to effectively have a veto on whether proposals for a development corporation go ahead. During the passage of the Bill, we have talked about a new relationship of mutual trust between local and central government, and we hope that such parliamentary scrutiny will not be used to undermine that.

I absolutely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, about the importance of determining the nature of parliamentary involvement in different types of development corporation. Of course, we would have concern about Parliament intending to have a veto on the locally led ones. The other amendments in this group are consequential on the Minister’s previous amendment on page 195. We look forward to her comments about the points raised.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 18th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 71 in my name and those of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornhill and Lady Warwick of Undercliffe. I declare my interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and chair of the Devon Housing Commission, as well as my various housing interests as set out in the register.

Following the speeches of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, your Lordships will note that some doubt hangs over the future of the infrastructure levy. We have heard that representations have been made to the Secretary of State from some 30 significant organisations, which all feel that it would be better to stay with the current Section 106 regime. Those bodies argue that it would be better to stay with the devil we know, even though the system is not perfect—after all, the current system has been achieving half the affordable housing built each year, and no one wants to reduce the numbers. However, our Amendment 71 supposes that the infrastructure levy persists, and it seeks to ensure that the new arrangements do not lead to fewer genuinely affordable homes. Before saying more about Amendment 71, I offer support to Amendment 77 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and Amendments 70 and 94 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stunell.

I am grateful to the coalition of housing bodies that constitutes Homes for the North for their expert help in drafting Amendment 71. In Committee, we considered a range of amendments which all had the objective, in effect, of holding the Government to account for their own promise that the new infrastructure levy arrangements will lead to

“as much—if not more”

affordable social housing.

In Committee, the Government responded to our proposed amendments with various counter-arguments, the first of which was that this issue would be better dealt with in the regulations that will follow enactment and appear in the revised version of the National Planning Policy Framework. However, the affordable housing element is a fundamental part of the planning system. Currently, 78.5% of the funding via Section 106 obligations on housebuilders goes to affordable housing. This current priority needs legislative protection in the face of endless competing claims for the new levy proceeds.

Secondly, it can be argued that local authorities should be entirely free to decide for themselves how to spend infrastructure levy proceeds, with no obligation to give priority to affordable housing. However, the infrastructure levy represents a significant new tax-raising power for local authorities, and it would surely be expected that the Government would impose some limitations on its use.

Thirdly, the Minister told us that the relevant clause in the Bill already protects affordable housing provision. We responded that the relevant clause simply required local authorities to

“have regard … to the desirability of ensuring that”

the provision of affordable housing

“is equal to or exceeds”

the output achieved under the Section 106 system. This is a very weak provision, enabling funding for affordable housing to be used instead for any number of other spending opportunities.

Amendment 71 addresses these points and substantially strengthens the wording of the Bill, covering both the way the levy is set and how the money is subsequently spent. It removes the lightweight

“have regard to the desirability of”,

leaving “must ensure”, thereby prioritising affordable housing as identified in the local development plan and the infrastructure delivery strategy.

The Minister has followed through from Committee stage in an exemplary manner. She has reconsidered the position, held meetings with interested Peers and brought forward amendments that address the same issue as our Amendment 71. Her Amendments 72, 73, 74 and 75 alter the offending words in the original version, leaving out

“to the desirability of ensuring”

and inserting the much more direct “seek to ensure”. I am grateful indeed to the Minister for bringing forward these changes in wording, which tighten up the requirements on local authorities to do the right thing in respect of social housing provision.

However—is there not always a “however”?—the new Amendment 76 provides the local authority charging the infrastructure levy with a “get out of jail free” card. It allows the charging authority to drop the obligations on developers where compliance with its requirements for affordable housing would make the development in this area “economically unviable”. It lets developers off the hook where, not for the first time, they plead the case that they cannot achieve the affordable housing identified in the local plan. It is these arguments about viability that have made Section 106 so fraught, usually with local planning authorities losing the argument against the developers and their consultants and solicitors.

This extra clause, which promotes viability on the face of the Bill, undermines the good work being done by the four preceding amendments from the Minister. I may be interpreting this unkindly, but the amendment seems to provide the opportunity for the powerful volume housebuilders to claim—probably because they have paid too much for the land—that providing affordable housing will reduce their profits excessively.

We now have the report of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Select Committee of the House of Commons, which looks at planning policy and comments on the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. The Select Committee welcomes these government amendments, which would strengthen the duty on local authorities to deliver at least as many affordable homes; but the committee warns that the additional proviso that this duty would be redundant if it could make the development “unviable” puts fulfilment of the Government’s ambition at risk.

The Commons committee concludes that the new infrastructure levy

“may not deliver as many affordable homes as the current regime”.

That outcome would be a disaster. We desperately need more, not fewer, affordable homes. This leaves me welcoming the government amendments, which attempt to do the same job as our Amendment 71, which need not now be pressed. But I will oppose the new government Amendment 76 unless it can be justified by the Minister when she responds.

This country desperately needs more housing for those on lower incomes. We must do everything we can to ensure that the new infrastructure levy regime does not diminish supply from the all-important obligations on housebuilders. There is a clear and present danger here, and I look forward to the Minister’s comments.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad to follow the noble Lord, Lord Best, who has rightly commended my noble friend the Minister for the careful way she has responded to some of the points made in Committee on the infrastructure levy, and indeed on some of the further discussions we have had and the responses to the technical consultation on the infrastructure levy. That is rather important to take into account.

I confess that, listening to the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, I felt that she was making a speech that would have been relevant at the time the technical consultation was published but not at the point at which the Government had clearly responded to that consultation, brought forward amendments and written to us, as the Minister did on 4 July, about those amendments and other factors.

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Amendment 70A, proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, seeks to make application of the levy optional. However, this would further fragment the system of developer contributions in England rather than help to streamline it. I should also add that the Government will have the ability to disapply the levy for a particular area or charging authority, as already stated. Moreover, the aim of a test and learn approach is that the system can be adapted to reflect early learning. It would not be appropriate to commit to a course of action, as the noble Baroness proposes in Amendment 81, without first assessing the evidence. Therefore, I hope that she will not move these amendments.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I apologise for interrupting my noble friend but, among the powers that have been taken, is she anticipating that the design choices yet to be made will include whether local authorities may set their charging schedule by reference to gross development value or, in certain circumstances, may choose to use floorspace charging, as they do under CIL at present?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right: these will come out as we go through the consultation and further design stages.

Government Amendment 93 is consequential on legislation which is already on the statute book; namely, the Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022. It brings the enforcement provisions relating to the community infrastructure levy in line with the enforcement provisions relating to the new levy, which in turn reflect the provisions in the 2022 Act, creating a consistent, coherent cross-government policy on sentencing law.

We believe that we have a strong case for proceeding with the new infrastructure levy and have built in safeguards to ensure that development can progress with vital mitigations in place. We recognise that introducing the infrastructure levy is a significant change to the existing system. That is why we propose to introduce the levy via a test and learn approach. If the levy is found to have negative impacts in the context of one particular local authority, the Secretary of State will have the flexibility to disapply the levy in that authority for a specified time period.

In any system of developer contributions there are trade-offs between seeking simplicity and at the same time enabling individual site circumstances to be catered for. These are tricky balances to strike, and if our initial policy design leans too far in one direction or another, it may impact on the pace at which development can come forward. It is likely that revisions will be required of the initial levy regulations, as occurred with the community infrastructure levy, as the system beds in. While we do not expect these to be substantial, it will give local authorities confidence that the system will be flexible and able to be adjusted to experience on the ground. We do not expect the power to disapply the levy to be used often—if at all. However, it is a sensible, inbuilt precautionary power to cater for all circumstances.

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As we heard in an earlier debate, this is a levelling-up Bill but the most valuable sites are in the better resourced local authorities. Unless receipts from the options are shared, or there is some clawback, which is not proposed, the policy, if it works, will not level up. So this is not just an auction; this is a gamble. We want to make progress with the Bill, so unless I am provoked by an insensitive reply from my noble friend the Minister—which of itself would be a first—I do not propose to test the opinion of the House on this. However, I did not want to let the debate on the clause pass without putting on the record the very real reservations that have been expressed by those who will have to operate it.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I want to speak to Amendments 96 and 98, to which my noble friend Lord Young has just spoken so eloquently and compellingly. I share with him a sense of gratitude to our noble friends for the time they have given and for the way in which they have addressed a range of concerns. However, I have to confess that not least my noble friend’s detailed examination of community land auctions in theory caused me to inquire of several people how it might work in practice, although we have not seen that in reality. Those are a few hours of my life I shall never see again, but the conclusion I reached at the end of that was that it will not happen. That is probably the main reason why my noble friend may choose not to press this amendment to a Division to remove this provision from the Bill: it will sit in the Bill, it will become part of the Act and it will never see the light of day beyond that point.

Why? First, because as we have just debated, Part 4 provides for what is, in effect, a mandatory system for all local authorities for deriving developer contributions. Unless that is an utter failure, I cannot see why local authorities would want to go down the path of community land auctions, as opposed to having a much fairer and more equitable system of levy. Secondly, let us look at how it actually works. My noble friend is saying that the regulations will tell us in due course under what circumstances a local authority can enter a scheme. Clause 133(2) says:

“The local plan may only allocate land in the authority’s area for development … if the land is subject to a CLA option or a CLA option has already been exercised in relation to it”.


So, in preparing a local plan—this is before the planning process is completed, so following a call for sites—the local planning authority must seek options from all the sites put forward before they are chosen to be allocated or not to be allocated.

Let us have a look at that. I declare my interest again as chair of Cambridgeshire Development Forum. In 2019, in preparation for a local plan, the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning service issued a call for sites. It received 675 applications. In 2020, it allocated 19 sites. We therefore have, I think, in this joint plan area, 656 sites that have to go through the process of agreeing a community land auction option and disclosing the price—actually, as the lawyers rightly tell me, not only disclosing the price, which many landowners and developers will resist, but agreeing a legally watertight potential option before the point at which the allocation is made. These options will cease to have effect only when the plan is adopted or approved. In this instance, that is expected to be in the middle of 2025, just ahead of the Bill’s cut-off date. That means that, under these circumstances, the community land auction options would subsist for nearly six years, during which 656 sites will be held in abeyance and nothing can effectively be done with them. The price on those 656 sites, at which they are willing to sell, would have been disclosed, while the actual value will continue to change.

I do not see any evidence that local planning authorities have any desire to go down this path and engage in this process. Of course, it is optional, as my noble friend will no doubt remind us—local planning authorities do not have to do it. The conclusion I have reached is that they will not do it. Therefore, in reality, my noble friend did the Government a service by suggesting that it be taken out and the Bill be lightened. As it happens, I suspect Ministers will not do that, but I think they must be realistic and understand that this is proceeding with very little chance of success.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Young and Lord Lansley, for throwing some much-needed light on the practicalities of community land auctions. During the debate in Committee, a number of us expressed scepticism about the value of having this in the Bill and how it will work. Nevertheless, it is a pilot scheme; there are plenty of reservations in the Bill itself that may make it more difficult for the blue-sky thinking of the think tanks, this having been brought forward at a late stage of the Bill.

There are some voices in the housing sector that support the proposal of community land auctions. Their argument is that this is the best way of extracting a fair portion of the enhanced land value that allocation for development ensures. That is what they say. Others argue, as did the noble Lords, that it will have the perverse effect of buying planning permissions—I think that was the phrase the noble Lord, Lord Young, used in Committee. For me, time will tell. The noble Lords have said they will not push this amendment, so time will tell whether the scheme is attractive to councils and whether it will then deliver what its proponents claim.

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[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, I first thank noble Lords who have spoken on this group of amendments, which understandably have given rise to a number of questions. I shall do my best to address the various doubts and reservations that have been expressed, particularly those of my noble friends Lord Lansley and Lord Young of Cookham. As a general comment, however, I accept and acknowledge that there is uncertainty about the impact of the land auctions approach. That is why we are proposing a cautious power to explore the approach through time-limited pilots, with only a small number of local planning authorities that volunteer to do so participating. Only local planning authorities that volunteer to participate in the pilot will do so; if no local planning authorities volunteer, then the pilot will not happen.

As regards my noble friend’s lament that consultation has not yet taken place, he might have a point if we were proposing something compulsory for local authorities. We are not; we are proposing pilots that will be completely voluntary. That point is relevant also to my noble friend’s doubts about the capacity of local planning authorities to operate and handle a CLA. Local authorities that do not feel they are resourced to run a CLA will not have to do so.

I hope that we are united across the House in believing that it is important that the land value uplift associated with the allocation of land can be captured and put to good use for the benefit of communities. Notwithstanding the expressions of doom and scepticism from my noble friends, I am firmly of the view that community land auctions are a promising approach to doing just that. CLAs are designed as a process of price discovery that will incentivise landowners not to overprice the land that they are willing to sell.

This incentive should, we believe, have the effect of bearing down on land prices, which, in turn, should create greater scope for developer contributions and hence better value for local communities. The additional benefit to a local planning authority is certainty about the amount of land value uplift, rather than their having to make assumptions about values as they typically do at present. Certainty offered by CLA arrangements should make it easier for a local planning authority to set developer contributions, and easier for them to control housing supply. Therefore, removing these clauses from the Bill would mean losing out on an opportunity to test CLA arrangements as a potential new solution to the shortcomings of the current system.

The key questions posed by my noble friend Lord Young can, I think, be summarised as: what is to prevent a local planning authority giving undue preferential treatment to land in which they have a financial interest, either when drafting their local plan or when granting planning consents, and what transparency will there be around the process? I shall try to reassure my noble friend on those two issues.

First, I wholeheartedly agree that we cannot shift into a system in which planning permissions can, in effect, be bought and sold. That is why we are seeking to fully integrate community land auctions into the local plan-making process. There will be transparency, as the local plan will be prepared in consultation with the local community, with the proposed land allocations in the draft plan consulted on and independently examined in public, in accordance with the proposed new plan-making process.

As I have said previously, local planning authorities will need to consider many factors in addition to financial benefits when deciding to allocate land in their local plan. How, and the extent to which, financial considerations may be taken into account will be set out in CLA regulations. Moreover, once the local plan is adopted and sites are allocated, planning permission must still be sought in the usual way.

In the current system, local planning authorities already consider whether a site can viably achieve compliance with emerging policies when allocating land. Therefore, it is not unusual for local planning authorities to have to assess planning applications on land that they have allocated and from which they expect to secure value in the form of developer contributions to mitigate the impacts of new development. It is also not unusual for local planning authorities to consider planning applications on land in which they have an interest or have previously held an interest. Therefore, while it is true to say that community land auctions are a novel and innovative approach, parallels exist within the current system.

We recognise there should be limits on how local planning authorities can use the receipts from community land auctions. We have set out controls on spending that broadly mirror those for the infrastructure levy, and we will set out more detail on what CLA receipts can be spent on in regulations.

We also recognise the importance of both public scrutiny and evaluation to ensure that we fully understand the impacts of the approach. For this reason, the powers are time-limited, expiring 10 years after the regulations are first made.

In summary, I hope that I have provided reassurance—

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend. He quite properly declared his interest as a landowner, but I ask him to think about this from the landowner’s point of view. In my experience around Cambridge, many of the most important sites are in the ownership of colleges and large family holdings. These would not make them available to be allocated in the local plan if, as a consequence, they would be subject to a CLA option and would lose control of the development, which is necessarily the result of the auction process. They would simply hold off. We will get less development as a result.

[Earl Howe (Con)]

I entirely take that point, which is why I spoke of a small number of local authorities that we expect to take up the option of a CLA. I am absolutely seized of the point that my noble friend has made. This will not be suitable in a number of areas around the country; he has given a good example from his own area.

Having said that, I hope I have assured noble Lords that existing legislation, and supporting policy and guidance, will mean that there are numerous safeguards to help ensure that community land auctions do not compromise the integrity of the planning system. It means that, while financial benefits can be taken into account in a CLA arrangement, there remains in place a host of measures to ensure well-planned development occurs.

As I said earlier, if we were to accept the amendments tabled by my noble friends Lord Young and Lord Lansley, we would lose the ability to test the merits of piloting community land auctions, which I believe would be a great pity, although I come back to what the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, rightly said: time will tell. For those reasons, I hope my noble friends will not feel the need to move their Amendments 96 and 98 when they are reached.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 11th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The disadvantage is that we are already doing it, so we would not want to duplicate it. We have listened to the earlier rounds and we are looking at the simplification of funding streams to local government to deliver levelling up and to connect that to the missions. There is no point in duplicating that, as it is already in the Bill.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Prompted by the noble Lord’s intervention, I do not think that Amendment 1 is consistent with the Bill as it stands, because Part 1 comes into force, according to the commencement provision, two months after enactment, whereas Amendment 1 requires the statement to be laid one month after enactment—so the two are inconsistent, and Amendment 1 is probably not effective.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, before the Minister sits down, I thank her for what she said about the Isles of Scilly and my Amendment 11. I am grateful that she is happy to arrange a meeting with colleagues in the Department for Transport but, if it seems appropriate to have an amendment to the levelling-up Bill, would that be possible at Third Reading if she and the other Minister agree?

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Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

2: Clause 1, page 1, line 6, at end insert—
“(1A) A Minister of the Crown must withdraw the statement if, before the end of the 30-day period, either House of Parliament resolves not to approve it.(1B) “The 30-day period” is the period of 30 days beginning with the day on which the statement is laid before Parliament (or, if it is not laid before each House of Parliament on the same day, the later of the days on which it is laid). (1C) When calculating the 30-day period, ignore any period during which Parliament is dissolved or prorogued, or during which both Houses are adjourned for more than four days.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would require a minister to withdraw the statement if either House of Parliament resolves not to approve it.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, in this group Amendment 2 in my name returns to an issue that we debated in Committee. Noble Lords who were present on that occasion will recall the debate and I will refer to it again in a moment, but I think it is useful to return to it, because it touches upon the broader question of the relationship between the laying of a statement of the levelling-up missions and parliamentary scrutiny of that—or indeed, parliamentary scrutiny of subsequent reports.

We just touched on the timing of all of these. For the benefit of the House, as it happened, I was looking at the timing of the reports and the statements. We are in a position now where we are 17 months on from the Government having published their levelling up White Paper. Technically speaking of course, when this Bill is enacted, the mission periods for the levelling-up missions will restart, since under the Bill as it stands the mission period for the levelling-up missions cannot be dated back to before the enactment of the Bill itself. As far as I can see, we are going to have a new statement of levelling-up missions at that point, and the mission period will clearly run to 2030, since all the levelling-up missions in the White Paper run to 2030. That satisfies the provision that it cannot be less than five years for the mission period.

My amendment relates to what Parliament does when it receives a statement of levelling-up missions. Under the Bill, strictly speaking, it does nothing; it waits until it receives a report. Let us imagine what happens to this Parliament in relation to such a report. The mission period starts two months after enactment—let us say, for the sake of argument, that it will be January 2024. The mission period could be delayed up to a month later under the provisions of Clause 1, so that gets us to February 2024. The 12-month report, therefore, takes us to February 2025, and the report could be received up to 120 days after the end of that 12-month period. So, the first report on levelling-up missions is already certain to take place after this Parliament has been dissolved and is likely not to be received by Parliament until the middle of 2025. That is the first point at which a report is likely to be received.

There is an interesting amendment in this group—Amendment 12, if I recall correctly—which relates to evaluating the levelling-up missions, in relation not only to Ministers’ assessments but to the assessments of the independent advisory council. We discussed the independent advisory council previously; we do not have its view formally on the levelling-up missions and progress. However, as we discussed previously, I think there is some merit in that amendment and that the independent advisory council should provide detail on the report.

The point of my amendment is to say that, when a statement of levelling-up missions is laid before Parliament, Parliament should have an opportunity to debate it if it feels strongly about it. That is not quite what my amendment says. I have adapted a legislative provision which Ministers introduced into the Procurement Bill—which is now in the other place—that, if the national procurement policy statement is the subject of a Motion critical of it within 40 days, Ministers would withdraw that statement. My amendment shortens the time period ever so slightly, the implication being that if Parliament has a problem with a statement of levelling- up missions, the time to do something about it would be when the statement is laid, not to wait what could be 15 months to look at the first report and express reservations about that.

From Ministers’ point of view, my noble friend Lord Howe, in the debate we had in Committee on 20 February—time has passed, has it not?—said that

“it would be extremely unlikely for any government to ignore the view of either House of Parliament if that view had been expressed in the form of a Motion that had been widely supported”.—[Official Report, 20/2/23; col. 1467.]

My difficulty is this: as a former Leader of the House of Commons, I can see that if the Opposition had a problem with a statement of levelling-up missions in the other place, the likelihood is that they would have time within 30 working days to lay a Motion and to debate it. It is not so straightforward here, and there are no formal processes associated with a statement of levelling-up missions. If we were to include my amendment, we would create an expectation that, if such a Motion were tabled, it should be debated within a short period of time.

That is necessary because the statement of levelling-up missions is, of itself, of importance. It is a major statement of government policy. I am assuming that the statement that will be laid, potentially at the end of this year, will be the same as the statement of levelling-up missions published on 2 February 2022. It may not be—there is nothing in the Bill that requires it to be.

My point is that what is in the statement of levelling-up missions is the Government’s responsibility. I am afraid that I do not agree with the other amendments in this group and the next which try to substitute the view of Parliament about what government policy should be for the view of the Government themselves. The statement of levelling-up missions is a central statement about government policy on the reduction of geographic and other disparities across the nation, and it is for government to set out what they are. My principle is very straightforward: government propose; Parliament disposes. By what mechanism will Parliament dispose of the statement of levelling-up missions? At the moment, the implication is that it does not do anything about them; it just waits for a report, which may be some time off in the future.

Amendment 2 is very simple. It says that when the Government publish a statement, Parliament should have an opportunity—not a requirement, but an opportunity—to look at the statement and, if it objects, table a Motion and express its disapproval, which is exactly what my noble friend Lord Howe said. However, we have to create an opportunity for that to happen. If such a Motion were supported by either House, it would be right for Ministers to withdraw the statement and revise it. The amendment does not tell them what to put into their statement; they could carry on with the same statement and try to reintroduce it with the same missions, or they could adapt the missions. However, I do not think it correct that they should proceed without any reference to Parliament or any opportunity for Parliament to express a view about the statement of levelling-up missions.

I hope my amendment is supported. I have sympathy with Amendment 12, on the independent advisory council, but I do not agree with amendments that are trying to substitute the view of this House at this moment for the Government’s view on what the policy on levelling up should be. That is for government to do. On that basis, I beg to move Amendment 2.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 6 in my name, but first, I point out that the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has raised a number of important issues of process and timing. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response, because Parliament will have to work around them. The noble Lord pointed out that that it is now 17 months since the White Paper was published and that the way things are, with a general election pending, we are likely to hear more about the levelling-up missions in 2025. As I understood it, he said that it would be useful if Parliament could debate the missions earlier, and he is right.

However, I do not agree with the noble Lord regarding my Amendment 6, on which he poured a little cold water. It is actually about indicators, not missions: it is about how you measure, through missions and metrics, how successful the Government have actually been in delivering on their objectives.

I remind the House as we start Report that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. My amendment would define the criteria that should be used to evaluate the success or otherwise of levelling-up policies across all government departments. I emphasise the obvious point that that levelling up is not just for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to pursue. Indeed, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, said in the previous group, we must tie funding to the levelling-up missions across Whitehall. By implication, that is fundamental, because all departments are supposed to be driving levelling up, so we need to be able to assess how successful they have been in doing that.

My amendment states:

“A statement of levelling-up missions must include an assessment of geographical disparities in the United Kingdom, broken down by local authority and by postcode area and council ward”.


Let me be clear: “postcode area” means the first three or four digits of a postcode, not the second half. Otherwise, I do not see how, if we talk only in terms of regions of England, we ensure that all parts of England are being considered for those outcomes. We have to cover urban, rural and coastal areas—all parts of England. We therefore have to have systems that will produce the evidence we need.

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[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

Before the Minister sits down, if the policies have been rural-proofed, what happened to the metrics? Clearly, they have not been rural-proofed. I raised public transport, which I think needs looking at.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken to this group on a range of issues. We have had some of these debates before. As far as the independent Levelling Up Advisory Council is concerned, we had that debate in Committee. We are now five months on, and we asked then for there to be greater transparency around its work and the advice that it gives, but we have not yet seen it. I hope my noble friend the Minister might take away from this debate that, when it comes to the point of issuing a report on the levelling-up missions, it will include—as is done for the Budget, for example, by the OBR—an independent assessment by the advisory council for the purposes of transparency. For it to work wholly within government and never see the light of day does not strike me as terribly independent, so I hope we see that change.

The point about public transport and rural-proofing was well made. The idea that the metric on public transport is how close one gets to the way that public transport works in London is hardly a basis for comparison or for the measurement of public transport connectivity in rural areas, but hey ho. The point is a good one: getting it into the metrics is potentially more important than including it in the reporting process. That is exactly why parliamentary scrutiny of the statements is important, not just parliamentary scrutiny of the reports of the missions after the passage of time.

None the less, I take my noble friend’s point about the flaw in my argument, which is a very simple one. We spent a lot of time debating the statement on the levelling-up missions, because the missions were published before the Bill was received. We spent a lot of time debating what is in them and what the alternatives might be; so far, so good.

In the next Parliament, we will no doubt have a new statement on the levelling-up missions at some point. It will be very interesting to see that and, following the points made by my noble friends and opposition Front-Benchers, in Committee and today on Report, I hope that there will be opportunities for debate when the statement is laid. That is especially true of and relevant in the other place. If there are objections and a desire for a debate, I hope that the Ministers will accept and understand that.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 18th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carrington (CB)]

Citizens Advice and others have pointed to provision of rural housing being a growing problem and a significant barrier to the rural economy, as the average house price can be up to 10% of average earnings, compared with 7.4% in urban areas, excluding London.

Navigating the planning system has always been a problem in rural areas, and larger building providers have been the most successful. CPRE, the countryside charity, has pointed out that successful housing applications tended to be in a very narrow segment of the market—the upper to middle end, which does not favour renters, first-time buyers and affordable housing.

The Government are prioritising the development of brownfield sites, which is certainly laudable, but 87% of these are in urban areas and often in the south-east. However, the economic impact of small developments and, in particular, affordable housing in rural communities can make a huge difference in supporting businesses and communities in terms of employment and other activities. It would also assist with the growing problem of rural homelessness, as identified by Shelter and other charities.

These amendments make strategic housing and market assessments of affordable housing compulsory, and influencing the rate of the infrastructure levy would be of great benefit to the sensible provision of affordable housing in rural areas.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I want briefly to refer to the clause stand part notice tabled by my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham and I for a probing purpose. Clause 126 has the effect of retaining the community infrastructure levy in London and Wales, but I will not talk about Wales. We are leaving Wales out of it for these purposes. The clause retains the community infrastructure levy in London, alongside the introduction of the infrastructure levy. I understand that that is essentially because the mayoral CIL has been used for the provision of Crossrail and is expected to do so for years to come.

However, it has raised in our minds a question to ask my noble friend the Minister about whether the community infrastructure levy, which of course does not provide for affordable housing, can live alongside the infrastructure levy for a number of years. The technical consultation, which is to be concluded on 9 June, does not explain how the respective contributions are to be assessed in a combined fashion because they apply to different parameters of the development. That leads to the assumption that with a 10-year transition we are looking at many places across the country with a combination of community infrastructure levy obligations that have arisen in relation to developments over a number of years and past developments, alongside the introduction of the infrastructure levy. The technical consultation, to my reading, does not help us understand how these two things are going to be meshed together. Of course, many noble Lords tabled their amendments in this group before the technical consultation was published. It answers some of the questions, but not all of them, and I think this is one question that it does not quite answer.

Another question occurred to me while reading the technical consultation in relation to affordable housing. It does not yet provide certainty about whether contributions under the infrastructure levy may be regarded as an improvement on the situation where developers are able to negotiate or renegotiate their liabilities under Section 106. Developers are not engaging in negotiations simply because they can and therefore they do and local authorities do not give way simply because they ask for it. Circumstances change.

I am always burned by the fact of the October 2008 crash. In the space, literally, of weeks, the economic viability of many large-scale development projects changed dramatically. If you look at any system, including this system, and it cannot meet the test of what you would do under those circumstances, I am afraid it does not help. Renegotiation of the contributions is one solution. It might be said that if the market price and the gross development value of a large site crash in the way they did in October 2008, the infrastructure levy crashes as well. The problem then is: how is the affordable housing going to be funded? How is the other infrastructure to be funded?

I do not have answers to all these things, but my noble friend and I will perhaps have an opportunity in the next group to talk a bit more substantively about the infrastructure levy and what we might do about it, but that does not answer the question. If affordable housing presently often suffers by being a residual after other Section 106 obligations have been met, and if under the infrastructure levy it becomes, in effect, a right to require and it is elevated above other requirements, there will be a great deal of difficulty in local communities about the fact that there are many other obligations that the infrastructure levy has to meet that may not be able to be met if the gross development value comes down or if, for example, the affordable housing right to require and the tenures that have to be provided lead to a much higher cumulative discount needing to be paid. We have to have some flexibility built into the system, and the risk at the moment is that that is not presently available in the way that we have understood it in the past. We can strengthen local authorities, and in the next group I hope we can talk about how that might be possible.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 313 and 317 propose to make the levy voluntary for local authorities or to introduce it through a pilot system. I acknowledge that the reforms we are proposing will need to be implemented in a sensible manner. There are problems with the existing system, but it is important that we do not introduce new issues. We want to ensure that the new levy delivers at least as much affordable housing as the existing system, and that is why we are currently consulting on the levy and intend to consult again on the draft regulations. We want input from across the private and public sectors, and we will consider the feedback carefully as we proceed. As I mentioned previously, the new levy will be introduced through a process of test and learn and a phased-out programme. I hope that this will provide the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, the reassurance that further piloting powers are not needed.

In terms of introducing the levy as a voluntary system, we are seeking to create more certainty across the whole system of developer contributions. We recognise that the levy must be introduced carefully to ensure that it will deliver the intended results. That is the purpose of the test and learn. However, if we do not aim for a unified system, we will dilute the potential benefits. I hope this provides the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, with sufficient reassurances to withdraw Amendment 313.

Amendments 364 and 364A are concerned with how the Government will assess the delivery of affordable homes under the new infrastructure levy. Given the length of time of the proposed rollout, requiring an assessment of the levy 120 days after the Bill is passed, as proposed in Amendment 364, provides an insufficient amount of time meaningfully to assess the impacts of the levy, but I reassure the Committee that during the rollout the Government will work closely with stakeholders to monitor the impacts of the levy. That includes monitoring our commitment to deliver at least as much, if not more, affordable housing.

In addition, the department has commissioned a scoping study to develop an approach to the evaluation of the planning elements of the Levelling-Up and Regeneration Bill, which we expect to report following Royal Assent, and the full evaluation informed by the findings of the scoping study will then be commissioned. I hope this gives reassurance to the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, and that she will feel able not to move her amendment.

On Amendment 364A, first homes were a 2019 manifesto commitment and are already successfully established in the market through a grant-funded early delivery programme. Outside that programme, the first homes discount is funded by developers as part of their contribution through planning obligations. The Government currently publish information about the delivery of first homes through both the early delivery programme and planning obligations in our annual affordable housing supply statistical release, and I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, that we will continue to do so. We will work closely with local authorities throughout the phased test-and-learn implementation programme to monitor the Government’s key objective to maintain affordable housing supply. This will include but will not be limited to first homes. I hope I have provided the noble Baroness with sufficient reassurance not to press that amendment.

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Debate on whether Clause 124 should stand part of the Bill.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, we remain with the question of the infrastructure levy in this part of the Bill. The purpose of debating the question of whether Clause 124 should stand part is to allow for a debate on the principles of the infrastructure levy. Curiously, it seems we will have a debate on the principles after we have discussed some of the detail—but let us not worry too much about that; we will no doubt return to all these subjects on Report anyway.

Although this is the levelling-up Bill, this clause is the not-levelling-up provision in it, since the Government’s technical consultation said that the infrastructure levy could lead to a possible increase in

“geographic inequalities already evident in the current system”.

We therefore cannot treat the infrastructure levy as tackling one of the central issues we face: that, while there is a large amount of development value being created in some parts of the country that can fund infrastructure and affordable housing, whether it does or does not, in other parts of the country it is not available at all.

That is exacerbated by the gross development value as well as the simple fact that, in some parts of the country, there is a relative dearth of brownfield sites—for example, in the east of England, my own area. That means that when development takes place on greenfield sites, the gross development value—netting off the build cost and existing use value—can be large. In many other parts of the country, there are more brownfield sites and, by the time you have calculated a lower gross development value and taken off the build cost and existing use value—both often higher for a brownfield site—you are left with very little of the gross development value available for the infrastructure levy.

There will, I am afraid, be a serious potential conflict between the purposes of the infrastructure levy. The community will look at it and say, “This will provide our schools, healthcare infrastructure, flood defences, open spaces and sport and recreation facilities” and all sorts of other potential benefits, looking at the amendments, as opposed to affordable housing. Under the existing system, two-thirds of developer contributions go to affordable housing. We do not know, but the pressures will, if anything, be higher rather than lower. That may lead to a very serious constraint on the amount of infrastructure levy available for the purposes that the infrastructure delivery strategy sets out.

I do not pretend that there is a completely different and better answer than what the Government are proposing. However, I am a bear of very simple brain; at Second Reading, I referred to the simple proposition that, on one hand, you have Section 106, by means of which developers are required to provide the infrastructure—in my view, they should also provide the affordable housing that is to be integral to the site they are developing or that is consequent directly upon that site—and, separately, there should be an infrastructure levy or community infrastructure levy.

I find it slightly surprising that the Government, having addressed the problems associated with the community infrastructure levy—it is not country-wide and it is based on pounds per metre squared, or a floor-space calculation, rather than on gross development value—did not do what struck me as the sensible thing: to rewrite aspects of the community infrastructure levy while retaining its basic structure, and make it mandatory for local authorities to introduce one. Instead, they are sweeping it all away—but not entirely. All sorts of definitions of the community infrastructure levy will be retained. The CIL will go on for years in relation to all the developments that receive planning permission before the infrastructure levy comes into place, as we just heard.

The infrastructure levy also does not sweep away Section 106 at all. This is supposed to be transparent and streamlined; I am sorry, but I do not find it to be that. There are three routes. There is the core levy routeway but, when you delve into that, there is a delivery agreement within it that is, to all intents and purposes, Section 106 retained. The infrastructure levy is not sweeping away Section 106 or the negotiable aspects. If the Government really want to set—I understand why they would—what is effectively a minimum level of contribution from developers in relation to a development that goes towards integral infrastructure as well as wider infrastructure requirements, why not just do that and directly relate the Section 106 contributions to the total of the infrastructure levy—or the community infrastructure levy under the current system?

We have a series of difficulties. The current system, with gross development value, will have serious potential issues. For example, how will these viability assessments be done, by whom and how many times? The Government themselves are contemplating a viability assessment at the application stage—the indicative one—then another provisional one post commencement but prior to the completion stage, and then a final adjustment. Reading the documentation, the implication is that each of the viability assessments is an incremental change on the previous ones. What we know, and the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, kindly agreed with me on this, is that the viability assessments can change dramatically. There is nothing in the structure of this that looks yet at what those implications might look like.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, and I am sure the entire Committee will join me in saying that we are delighted to have him back with us. I also commend the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, for the huge amount of work that has gone into this. So much is having to be filled in from the Opposition Benches and indeed the Back Benches on the other side, because this is such a skeleton Bill.

We have not only a shortage of birds, mammals and insects, but we are running into a shortage of Henry VIII metaphors. We have Henry VIII on steroids with rockets strapped to his boots—I have run out of additions to that one. The Bill as before us now would put into law an extreme right to Ministers to do whatever they would like. It is interesting to be having this debate in the context of the just-completed Report of the retained EU law Bill, because then your Lordships’ House expressed very clearly a desire to see non-regression in environmental regulations, but we need amendments such as these to the Bill to deliver the will that the House has expressed.

This group also made me think of debate on the economic crime Bill, where we were recently discussing the issue of freeports. There is a great deal of fear and concern in the community that these are places of open slather, where businesses will be allowed to do whatever they like and destroy whatever they like, where all the rules are taken away. As the Bill is written, that is what environmental outcome reports will effectively be doing: taking away EU-derived protections and leaving nothing written down in their place.

I will not run through it in detail, but if any noble Lords have not seen it, I point them to Wildlife and Countryside Link’s excellent report going line by line through a number of the amendments and explaining their importance. I pick out a couple of points. Amendment 372 concerns the climate. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said, we are in a climate emergency, and how can that be missing from this crucial Bill? We are supposed to be talking about a levelling-up Bill. These changes to environmental protection around the country seems a long way from levelling up, but that is where we are. If we think about the protection of nature and the impact of the lack of nature on public health, people’s well-being and communities, it is of particular interest to communities generally seen to be in need of levelling-up support.

I particularly pick up one element of Clause 141: the fact that it destroys the mitigation hierarchy. The environmental mitigation hierarchy starts with “avoid”: do not trash things in the first place. We are one of the most nature-deprived corners of this battered planet and should be absolutely avoiding environmental damage. At the moment, we are doing the opposite. I think of how often my social media feed and my email queue are full of desperate people saying, “How can we be cutting down this ancient tree to build one house?” or, “How can we be destroying this hedge when, with a bit of initiative and creativity, we could leave the hedge and build some houses as well?” There is so much we are not doing, and the way the Bill is written allows open slather to that.

I just note one point on Amendment 388, which introduces a super-affirmative procedure for regulations. It is an inadequate backstop: it is a backstop, but not nearly good enough. We need to write the essential protections into the Bill. That would mean that the Committee is following the desire that the House expressed at Report on the retained EU law Bill.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to three amendments in my name in this group: Amendments 378A, 378B and 386A. They are designed to try to ensure that this part of the Bill works effectively, and I hope will be regarded as helpful by my noble friend on the Front Bench. Not everything I have had to say has always been helpful, but I hope this is—it is all intended to be helpful, of course.

I remind the Committee of my registered interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. In that context, members of the forum from BDB Pitmans helped me with the construction of these amendments. Amendment 378A relates to Clause 142(3), which provides for informing the public and for “adequate public engagement” to take place in relation to the exercise of functions under this part. The effect of this new provision could be to extend public consultation requirements to the exercise of permitted development rights, because of the use of “proposed relative consent”. These are consents.

The present situation does not require such consents to be the subject of such a consultation requirement. In the legislation as it stands, adequate public engagement does not imply no public engagement. This would therefore increase the burdens on utilities, for example, in exercising a consent for a permitted development right in relation to telecommunications, highways, rail, et cetera. Amendment 378A would enable the Secretary of State to disapply the requirement where it would impose a disproportionate burden on development. Alternatively, page 174 mentions

“proposed relevant consent or proposed relevant plan”

in relation to “adequate public engagement”. If “proposed relevant consent” was replaced with “EOR regulations”, it would serve the purpose perfectly well, and save the problem that might otherwise arise.

Amendment 378B relates to Clause 142(1) on non-regression. It is a pleasure to welcome back to his place my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge. We have heard from him about the

“overall level of environmental protection”.

This is defined by reference to the European Union law when this Act is passed. My Amendment 378B would enable the Secretary of State to take into account, in exercising this responsibility to maintain the level of environmental protection, any urgent need for energy resilience. It is worth remembering that Section 20 of the Environment Act 2021 provides for environmental legislation to be introduced with a statement that

“will not have the effect of reducing the level of environmental protection provided for by any existing environmental law”.

There is then in that section a statutory provision enabling the Secretary of State to make

“provision that is different from existing environmental law”

and

“might provide for the same or a greater level of environmental protection”.

Why then is there no equivalent provision in relation here to the making of EOR regulations? The inflexibility of this provision is particularly illustrated by the prospect in the European Union of the introduction of a streamlined environmental assessment process for low-carbon technologies. I have reflected this in the phrase

“urgent need for energy resilience”.

This would enable Ministers to take account of such a process to advance low-carbon technologies and not be tied specifically to a level of environmental protection defined by current environmental law. I encourage my noble friend to consider either my amendment or something similar to the provision in Section 20 of the Environment Act 2021.

Amendment 386A refers to Clause 150, which makes the consequential amendments to this part. It is about the proposed repeal of Section 71 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, which is what provides for environmental assessments. As it stands, that section will be repealed two months after this Bill passes into law. Existing environmental impact assessment regulations will then subsist from that moment until such time as the EOR regulations can be made, following the entry into force of those regulations.

But how long is the gap? How long will it be between this Act coming into force and the making of the EOR regulations? It could easily be well over a year and possibly two. For the greater part of that period, no power would remain to amend the environmental impact assessment regulations, pending the environmental outcomes reports regime. The EOR power is not able to amend the EIA regime until that stage.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 18th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am very glad to follow my noble friend and to heartily endorse and agree with what he had to say about the importance of inclusiveness and inclusion by design. In this group of amendments, I also endorse firmly the importance of design as an integral part of the planning system. As I understand it, the Government are firmly in that camp. They believe that design can ensure that we create far more fit-for-purpose places in which to live. That is what design is all about: fitness for purpose. The Government also think that they can be beautiful places. I am sure each of us has our own view of what beauty might be in this context, and I do not suspect that we can easily write it into legislation.

What is rather interesting is that we have in Schedule 7 a reference to the fact that local authorities must prepare such a design code. Of course, behind that lies—as ever in debates on this section of the Bill—the National Planning Policy Framework, which has within it the idea of what those design codes must look like. Even behind that, there is the national model design code—fine. But then let us have a look at what is in the relevant chapter of the Government’s draft National Planning Policy Framework. Here, I want to go back to the discussion we had earlier. I will not repeat it all, but it was essentially about the centrality of environmental principles, the achievement of our net-zero objectives, nature recovery strategies and biodiversity net gain. All those things are terrifically important, so you would imagine, would you not, that because design and place-making have to start from core principles, they would be reflected in the National Planning Policy Framework when it considers what well-designed and beautiful places need to be, but that is not how it works at all.

Before I expand a little more on chapter 12 of the draft National Planning Policy Framework, let me just say that it is not me saying that environmental principles are central to this issue. The Royal Town Planning Institute, together with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and friends from LDA Design, whom I know well—I declare an interest; my son-in-law works for them—worked on a document called Cracking the Code, which was published a year ago, about the national design code and the question of how that should reflect environmental principles. Let me quote one paragraph from the report:

“Design codes should have a critical role to play in planning for the future of places and ensuring that opportunities to maximise development’s contribution to net zero and nature recovery are locked in from the outset, through strong spatial development frameworks and strategic design requirements. Codes can outline ways for developments to combine net zero and nature recovery with place making and encourage unique and innovative approaches to green and blue infrastructure and the role of landscape.”


So, they captured the whole centrality of the environmental argument in a paragraph.

The practicalities of this are immediately evident. If you are designing new towns now, which will be built mostly in the 2030s and will be lived in through the 2060s, 2070s and 2080s, you have to think about what a carbon-free public space—and, for that matter, private space—looks like. What does the transport look like? What does the heating look like? How do people live? How do they move around? There is no point designing places that do not take full account of those changes that are in prospect.

You would find all that in the National Planning Policy Framework, would you not? There is brief reference somewhere here to the environment, but not much. What there is, however, is a list of the things that the design codes and design processes should reflect. It includes visually attractive, good architecture; sympathy to local character and history; a sense of place; optimising the potential to sustain development in the future; safe, inclusive, accessible; promoting health and well-being. These are all admirable, and there is then a full paragraph on trees, but I cannot find anywhere else any reference to nature recovery, biodiversity, environmental principles or the processes for how design can contribute, and is central, to the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

I seek to reassure the noble Lord that it will be covered in regulations.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

It might be covered in the national model design code, but I do not think that is how it looks at the moment. The purpose of this document last year was to say, “Put it into the national model design code”. Logically, if you are going to do that, you have to at least signal its importance in the National Planning Policy Framework. Otherwise, all your guidance —because, technically, that is what it is—simply does not cohere together. What we have discovered, which is at the heart of many of these arguments, is that in large measure we do not yet know—we are still to debate this—how far what the Government say in the National Planning Policy Framework will be national development management policies and, by extension, cannot be varied from in local plans. So we have this inexorable relationship between things that we do not know and how it is going to turn out in the future.

Amendment 222 is very simply saying, because we do not know and cannot find evidence of the centrality of these environmental principles to the national model design code or the National Planning Policy Framework, let us put them in the Bill. All I am doing in this context is saying that, at this stage, I want to know that they will be central to the design approach—and if they are not, they ought to be. I hope that Ministers will be able to reassure me on that point.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to offer Green support for all these amendments. On the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, it is worth reflecting that if you design a space, a community or a building that is accessible and welcoming to everybody, that will be a really good building for any person to enjoy. This is the same principle that applies to accessible public transport and many other areas.

I mostly want to speak to Amendment 222 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. I commend him both on tabling this amendment and on his excellent introduction to it. He was perhaps reading the mind of the Committee on Climate Change, because he must have tabled this amendment before its report about three weeks ago, which really stressed the nation’s utter failure to prepare for the climate reality that is now already locked in—what is now known in shorthand as adaptation. Another Member of your Lordships’ House, the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, said:

“This has been a lost decade in preparing for and adapting to the known risks that we face from climate change”.


It is very clear that what we should be doing now is making sure that we design, build and deliver buildings, infrastructure and communities that are actually fit for—as the noble Lord said—the next century. To take a practical example of this, the APPG on Wetlands has done a great deal of work and spread the word about how crucial wetlands are. We think about all the issues the Government keep facing all the time on sewage and what is spilling into our rivers and oceans. Sustainable urban drainage systems and just the smallest-scale wetlands—something that I have seen NGOs presenting with—can be a way of enriching biodiversity and addressing the kind of issues that this amendment does. They also create a much more pleasant environment for people and do something to tackle all the issues we have with water distribution in our country.

It is not just the Committee on Climate Change. Yesterday your Lordships’ House gave strong support for the amendment to the Energy Bill saying that we absolutely have to deal with retrofitting—with the adaptation that is necessary for existing homes. That very much addresses this amendment as well.

I will offer one constructive suggestion to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and something to think about. We have now got to the stage where pretty much everyone, including the Government, is talking about the climate emergency and about biodiversity in nature. These are just two of the very big issues we face in terms of the planetary boundaries. A year or so back, the Stockholm institute concluded that we have exceeded the planetary boundary for novel entities, which is shorthand for pesticides, plastics and pharmaceuticals. I suggest that the next step—which everyone will be talking about in a few years, but we can get ahead of the curve now—is to say that we need design codes that ensure we are living within all the planetary boundaries, which includes things such as geochemical flows and protecting fresh water: a whole range of issues that come under the planetary boundaries model. If we are indeed to be able to survive and thrive on this poor, battered planet, we have to design to live within those planetary boundaries.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

239A: Clause 93, page 100, line 20, at end insert—
“39B Infrastructure providers’ assistance with plan making(1) If an infrastructure provider receives a notification under section 39A(1) which would have an impact on that providers’ investment plans that provider must notify its relevant regulatory body.(2) Regulations made under section 39A(3) may include provision relating to the powers and responsibilities of relevant infrastructure regulatory bodies, to enable them and their regulated providers to meet the reasonable requirements made for infrastructure providers by a plan-making authority.(3) “Infrastructure provider” includes providers of transport services, water and sewerage providers, flood-prevention and drainage providers, power supply and distribution providers, and telecommunications providers.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would require infrastructure providers to notify their regulators about Local Plans affecting their investment intentions and empower the Secretary of State by regulation to enable the regulators to support the required changes to infrastructure investment arising from Local Plans.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, at this late hour I shall be brief. The point of this amendment is to raise with my noble friends on the Front Bench an issue which I imagine is one that the Government themselves have been aware of and wondered what precisely they should do about it. I remember a White Paper a few years back that specifically referred to it.

The issue is that, in many cases, the availability of infrastructure investment, particularly by utility companies, can significantly impair the potential for local authorities to proceed with their local plans. I freely confess that I am using Clause 93 and perhaps slightly extending its remit somewhat. This is not simply about plan-making; this is about enabling local authorities in their plan-making process to trigger a possibility for the Government to amend the structure of the regulatory environment for utility companies in order to meet the development planning intentions of their local authorities. That is probably stretching it too far but, if not by this mechanism, I hope Ministers will be able to help us to look at whether we can do this in the Bill.

There is a central issue: you want to have strategic planning—I think we all do; I will not rehearse that argument again—but that absolutely requires investment by utility companies. Many utility companies are in a position where their investment for speculative development—that is, that which has not received planning permission—is outwith their regulated pricing structure. Essentially, if they are going to do it, they will do it with additional debt, and now many of them are taking on a great deal of debt in any case—we saw in the price review that the water companies are expected to absorb a substantial amount of debt. A balance is constantly being struck between the amount which can be added to people’s domestic bills and the amount that is required for longer-term future investment.

At the moment, the utility companies are often resisting making such investments in anticipation of development. How do we overcome this? We have a particular case at the moment around Cambridge. The Greater Cambridge local plan is effectively stymied at the moment by the Environment Agency saying that there are not water resources available in our area to support it. There is a plan for a reservoir at Chatteris, but unless and until the investment in transfer networks has also taken place and there is local infrastructure to support the particular development proposals, the plan cannot go ahead.

The purpose of the amendment is, very straightforwardly, to say that, if local authorities can ask bodies of a public nature—and of course, utility companies are bodies with public functions—they should be able at the same time to require those infrastructure providers to notify their regulatory bodies about the requirements to assist with plan making and, if necessary, for the Secretary of State to then to make regulations that can change the nature of the regulator’s control of their ability to respond to the requirements of local authorities.

It is a device, I admit, but it is a device to try to tackle what I think is a current and practical problem, and I hope it might commend itself to my noble friend. I beg to move Amendment 239A.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I have just a quick question. It is a really interesting amendment, and I was wondering how the noble Lord saw the role of the regulator fitting in to all of this.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I was hoping that where this occurs, the Secretary of State—not just the Secretary of State for Levelling-Up, of course, but all Secretaries of State—would consult the regulators about whether and how they can accommodate this and, if necessary, use the power here to make regulations that might impact on, for example, water, electricity or transport legislation.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I thought it was a very interesting amendment, and it reminded me of when I was a very young councillor, a very long time ago now, on Southwark Council, and we were attempting to finish off the development of Burgess Park. We had all sorts of problems with the statutory undertakers of various facilities in the area in terms of getting them to do their work. I see the point he is making. We had the devil’s own job to get the various organisations to co-operate with the council. We needed to improve the park, and we were having all sorts of problems with BT, the water companies and everybody else. We really struggled. Development of the park was held up because we were not getting that co-operation. Comparatively, that is quite small scale, but it is the same sort of thing. We wanted to build a better amenity for the community, but it was held up because of less than helpful work from some of the statutory undertakers in the area.

The amendment has merit, and I hope we will get a reasonable response from the Minister. I was obviously sorry I was not in earlier, because I heard that leasehold came up. I am very disappointed that I did not get in on that. I will not miss my chance on that when it comes up again. The amendment raises an important point. I see lots of development going on in London, and the role of the regulator with the statutory undertakers is important.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

This has been a very interesting debate. I remember when I was a council leader how frustrating it was when utilities dug up my lovely roads the week after and did not tell me they were doing it. However, things have probably changed slightly since we were in those positions.

I thought it might be interesting to reflect on what Clause 93, which is where this comes from, and which introduces a requirement to assist in plan making, actually says. The Explanatory Notes state:

“The clause is intended to support more effective gathering of the information required for authorities producing”


a range of plans, including local plans. It achieves this through placing

“a requirement on specific bodies”

with public functions

“to assist in the plan-making process, if requested by a plan-making authority”.

This could consist, for example, of providing information to the relevant authority, or assisting in identifying appropriate locations for infrastructure. That is important, because that is the first push by government to require these companies to work with us.

Amendment 239A addresses legislating for subsequent regulations regarding the link between infrastructure providers who become aware of significant implications for their services as a result of plan-making activities, and a requirement to inform the relevant regulator in order to make provision for any necessary investment. I applaud my noble friend Lord Lansley for raising this issue, as it is an important aspect of joining up the planning system and the provision of suitable infrastructure. However, we believe the amendment is not necessary—wait for it—because the relevant regulations could already consider matters such as notifying regulatory bodies of infrastructure providers. Those regulations will, of course, follow after the passage of the Bill.

Regarding the amendment’s provision for meeting the reasonable requirements identified in a plan, we must be careful in drawing up such regulations that provisions do not cut across or duplicate the provisions of the other multiple legal and regulatory frameworks that govern the operation of the kind of infrastructure providers that my noble friend has in mind. Therefore, while I have a good deal of sympathy with the general point raised, the Government cannot accept the proposed amendment, but will want to be mindful of these considerations while drafting any relevant regulations. I hope that, with that explanation, my noble friend will withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend, because thinking about those regulations is exactly the right thing to do. If my noble friend is correct and the scope of Clause 93 will allow such regulations to extend beyond the infrastructure providers to the relationship between those providers and the regulatory bodies, that would be extremely helpful.

I am grateful to all who took part in the debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, illustrated with her reference to PR24, the current water price review just published, that this does not necessarily relate to the structure of local plan-making. Water companies might say, “This is all very well, but we know what our price constraints enable us to fund in the period 2024-25, and the local authority is presently consulting on a local plan process that extends to 2040”.

Interestingly, PR24 has a broader structure for the water companies and their investment programmes out to 2050, because of the net-zero implications. I have been reading carefully and rather laboriously through PR24 and all its component parts. What you do not find is an appreciation of what the infrastructure requirements would be linked to, mapping the potential scale and location of development, because generally speaking local authorities have not done that; generally they map their development plans out to 2030 or 2035, and occasionally 2040, but not 2050. I remind the Committee of my role as a chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. We said to all these bodies, “Why don’t you now structure your plan up to 2050, because otherwise you are not really thinking about the whole thing?” I can get away with saying that because the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, is not in her place; she would tell me off for treating 2050 as the target, when it should clearly be 2025.

For the moment, we have the alignment of planning, which is absolutely critical here, but when it comes down to it, very often the local authorities are already in an awkward position. They would like to make specific allocations of potential development sites but they are constrained from doing so because infrastructure providers cannot guarantee that they would be able to meet a requirement in that location and on that timescale. So should they do it or should they not? If my noble friends says that regulations might be able to unlock the potential for that pledge of investment by utility providers, I would be immensely grateful for that. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 239A withdrawn.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

My Lords, I have to inform your Lordships that, if this amendment is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments 186, 187 and 187A because of pre-emption.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I want to speak to Amendments 186 and 187B in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham. When we concluded the debate last Wednesday, my noble friend the Minister explained the Government’s reason for the introduction of the national development management policies. I reiterate to my noble friend that I very much welcome and anticipate a further response to clarify how the NPPF and NDMP relate to one another, perhaps by particular reference to the example of the chapter on green-belt policies.

If I can paraphrase, my noble friend said that a key reason was to make local plans more local. She said that, when making a determination of a planning application, the local plan policies will “sit alongside” the national development policies. But what if they are not consistent? This group of amendments looks at that question. The present position is that applications for planning permission must be made in accordance with the development plan, unless material considerations indicate otherwise. Clause 86 of the Bill inserts

“and any national development management policies.”

Therefore, applications must be made in accordance with the development plan and any national development management policies. The material considerations would need to “strongly indicate otherwise”. We argued that point last Wednesday.

Section 38 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 states that, if a policy

“in a development plan … conflicts with another policy in the development plan the conflict must be resolved in favour of the policy which is contained in the last document”—

so it is simply a matter of which is the most recent. In future, that conflict may be between a development plan and the national development management policies. The Government, to resolve that question, state in Clause 86(2):

“If to any extent the development plan conflicts with a national development management policy, the conflict must be resolved in favour of the national development management policy.”

We have heard from the noble Baroness moving Amendment 185A that it proposes that proposed new subsection (5C) created by Clause 86(2) be deleted. Amendment 192 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, would give precedence to the development plan. This turns the Government’s intention on its head. However, I have to say that it runs a serious risk of undermining national policies by virtue of local plan-making and turning the whole problem the other way around.

My Amendment 186, tabled with my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, would add the word “significant” to make the phrase, “if to any significant extent” there is a conflict. That would have the simple benefit of avoiding the disapplication of development plan policies because of an insignificant difference between that and an NDMP. It would run the risk—I have to acknowledge—of debate over what “significant” means. However, if the Minister were to object to the insertion of the word “significant” because of the risk of litigation, I will return to the question of the litigation that might arise through the insertion of the word “strongly”, which the Government resisted on those grounds.

Amendment 187, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, would reverse the primacy of NDMP over the development plan where there is a substantial set of devolved responsibilities given to a combined county authority. These are, in effect, the planning powers of the constituent local planning authorities, so I have to confess that I am not at all clear why, if the powers are vested in a CCA, as opposed to a local planning authority, the primacy should be switched simply on those grounds.

Overall, we have a group of amendments here that illustrate the problem but do not offer a solution. The development plan should not be inconsistent with the NDMP. The new Section 15C of PCPA 2004, to be inserted by Schedule 7, states this. On page 294 of the Bill, it can be seen that the intention of the Government is that there should not be any inconsistency between the two. However, in practice, such inconsistencies will arise in relation to specific planning applications. That is where the problem emerges. When they do, as the Minister herself made clear, this is a plan-led system, and a decision should, so far as possible, be made in accordance with the development plan. As the NPPF makes clear, where there is no relevant plan policy or no up-to-date plan—our Amendments 187A and 187B are relevant here about the necessity of an up-to-date plan—then the decision should be made by reference to the national development management policies, which will continue to be given statutory weight, by virtue of this legislation, even if the plan is out of date.

Therefore, I ask the Minister to reflect on this question and whether the primacy of the national development management policies should be achieved through the plan-making process—that is, sustain that question of there being no inconsistencies—but also where no up-to-date plan applies. However, if there is an up-to-date plan, then that should be the basis of the decision. That would retain the principle that those seeking planning permission should do so in accordance with an up-to-date local plan. I hope that the Minister will consider whether, when we come back to this on Report, that might be the basis for amending the Bill.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak particularly to Amendment 187, to which my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb has attached her name. She is mostly handling the planning parts of this Bill, but she is otherwise engaged at this moment. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, made a very interesting speech. It comes down to the question of what we mean by “inconsistency”. Do we mean that the local plan is trying to set higher standards than the national guidelines? If that is so, what we should have are national plans that set minimum standards. It should be within the power of local authorities to set higher standards if they so desire and if they think those are appropriate or necessary for the local area.

The noble Lord asked why this should apply particularly to CCAs, given that they are essentially a compilation of existing powers. The situation is that, where you have a CCA that has been created and handed the highways, environmental and other powers, certainly in local perception, in the understanding of people who have elected people on to those local bodies, the power that has been handed to this local body should rest in that local body.

Here, we have to look at the context of what it is like on the ground. I spent the weekend visiting various local areas outside London and hearing lots of complaints about local councillors’ lack of power to do what local residents want them to do. National planning rules have become far too bloated, and local councillors simply do not have the power to shape what happens in their local community in the way that residents expect them to. For example, people are surprised at how little power councils can have over the types of business established on a local high street. Massive international chains such as Starbucks can undermine the character and charm of a local scene, and the local planning authority and councillors are left wrestling over how the signage looks—which is not the issue that local people are most concerned about. There are more than 550 Green councillors around the country now, and this probably gets to the heart of what I hear from them so often: expressions of frustration at how power is centralised here in Westminster.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by addressing Amendments 185A and 192 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Taylor of Stevenage and Lady Hayman of Ullock, which seek to remove or reverse the precedence given to national development management policies over the development plan in planning decisions where there is a conflict between them. I welcome this further opportunity to explain the objectives behind this aspect of the Bill.

As I indicated in our debate on this issue last week, national development management policies are intended to bring greater clarity to the important role that national policy already plays in decisions on planning applications. A clear and concise set of policies with statutory weight will make sure that important safeguards, such as protections for designated landscapes and heritage assets, are taken fully into account, without these basic matters having to be repeated in local plans to give them the statutory recognition they deserve.

These amendments deal specifically with what to do in the event that there is a conflict between national development management policies and the development plan when a planning decision must be made in accordance with both. The amendments would remove the certainty created by the Bill that up-to-date national policies on important issues, such as climate change or flood protection, would have precedence over plans that may well have been made a long time ago.

Some local plans are woefully out of date; for example, some date back to the 1990s. Only around 40% of local planning authorities adopted a local plan within the last five years. It would, in our view, be wrong to say that, in the event of a conflict, national policy does not take precedence over out-of-date policies in these plans, which is what these amendments would achieve. This point is particularly crucial because we wish to use national policies to drive higher standards, especially on good design, the environment and tackling climate change, and it is important that these take precedence in the event of a conflict with out-of-date policies in plans.

Nevertheless, I expect such conflicts to be very limited in future as we are making it easier to produce plans and keep them up to date, and because the Bill makes sure that new plans will be drawn up consistently with national policies, including the new national development management policies. Given the important role that national development management policies will perform and their benefits in providing certainty, I hope noble Lords understand that we are not able to support this amendment. I agree with my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham that few, if any, conflicts should arise under this new way of working.

Amendment 186 in the name of my noble friend Lord Lansley would give national development management policies precedence over the development plan only where there was a “significant” conflict between the relevant policies. Where a local policy and national development management policy are both relevant considerations but not in any conflict, it will still be for the decision-maker to decide how much weight is afforded to these policies based on their relevance to the proposed development. Our clause sets out only what should be done in the event of a conflict between policies where they contradict one another. My noble friend brought up the green belt. Policies controlling development in the green belt are standard nationally and will be set out in the NDMPs. Local plans could—will—define the boundaries of the green belt, as they do now, so I do not think there should be any conflict between those two issues.

We have explained why we believe it is important that NDMPs are prioritised in the event of such a conflict, and we expect such conflicts to be limited, as I have said.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I fear I was not clear enough about what I asked about last week and hoped to hear more about. Chapter 13 of the NPPF describes the green-belt policies. It forms two parts: the first relates to plan-making and the second, from new paragraph 149 onwards, to how these policies should be applied in relation to development in the green belt and the determination of planning applications. My assumption has been—partly answering the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, that we do not know what the NDMPs are; this is a good illustration—that the latter will be NDMPs, the former will not. There will continue to be guidance in the NPPF. If I am wrong, I would be glad to be advised; otherwise, it would be helpful to understand how these things divide up.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I am sorry. Obviously, I got the issue slightly wrong in the last debate. I thought that we were talking about a conflict between two green-belt policies. I will go back to Hansard. Obviously, my answer is not relevant, therefore, but I will check that out and give my noble friend a proper answer in writing. I think that is the best way to do it, as we got it wrong.

Additionally, the suggested wording of Amendment 186 would also generate uncertainty and associated litigation, because the term “significant” would be open to considerable interpretation. Therefore, as the amendment would cut across the greater certainty which we hope to bring to planning decisions, it is not one that we feel able to accept.

My noble friend Lord Lansley also brought up the decision-making role of the NDMPs being constrained by matters not covered by an up-to-date plan. NDMPs will focus on matters of national importance that have general application. This will enable the local plans to be produced more quickly so that they no longer move to repeat the things that are in the national plans. It is important that there should not be—as there is now—this duplication in plans. I think this makes it simpler and less open to conflict.

Amendment 187 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, which relates to higher-tier authorities with planning powers, would give precedence to the development plan over national development management policies, where a mayor or combined authority has strategic planning powers, or where a group of local planning authorities have produced a joint spatial development strategy.

As I have set out, we believe that there are good reasons why, in certain cases, national development management policies may need to take precedence over those in the development plan. National development management policies will underpin, with statutory weight, key national policy protections in cases where plan policies, including spatial development strategies, become out-of-date.

I note that the Secretary of State already has powers to direct amendments that must be made to draft versions of spatial development strategies before they are published, where he thinks it is expedient to do so, to avoid any inconsistency with current national policies. These powers have been used sparingly in the past, although they have been used where important national policies were duplicated but inappropriately amended.

For these reasons, we believe it is right that national development management policies would be able to override the development plan in those cases where it is absolutely necessary, even where there is a strategic plan-making body in place. Thus, this is not an amendment that we feel able to support.

I think I answered my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham in a previous debate, but I will repeat what I said for those Members who were not here last time. Amendment 187B in the name of my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham aims to ensure that decisions on planning applications are taken in line with an up-to-date plan, with an up-to-date plan being defined as less than five years old.

As previously mentioned, we know that, for local plans to be effective, they must be kept up to date. Currently, plans must be reviewed to assess whether they need updating at least once every five years and they should then be updated as necessary. We intend to replace this current review requirement, which is a source of confusion and argument. It has been described in this place as a loophole and I have some sympathy for that characterisation.

In the Bill policy paper published last May, we committed to set out a new, clearer requirement in regulations for authorities to commence an update of their local plans every five years. It is, however, important that we do not create a cliff edge in law that forces important aspects of plans to be out of date for decision-making purposes just because they are more than five years old; this would, for example, have the effect of weakening green belt protections very considerably.

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I fully understand the intention behind these amendments; they would certainly focus the minds of the authorities on plan-making. However, I believe that the legislative and policy provisions for keeping plans up to date that we are putting in place strike a better balance so, as with the other amendment, we are unable to support that.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am sorry to interrupt again, but my point relates to having an up-to-date plan. My noble friend has made clear her rather compelling points about the national development management policies taking precedence over an out-of-date plan but, if there is in place an up-to-date plan that works and is both recent and relevant, why should an NDMP seek primacy over an up-to-date local plan?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

What I am trying to explain to noble Lords is that there should be no conflict because they deal with different things. The national development management policies are likely to cover common issues that are already being dealt with in national planning policies, such as the green belt, areas at risk of flooding and heritage areas. They would not impinge on local policies for shaping development, nor would they direct what land should be allocated for a particular area. They are totally different things. Looking to the future, therefore, I cannot see what conflict there would be.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I hope the Lords spiritual will forgive me for borrowing from their script, but I feel like I am in green heaven, because everything I have just been hearing from all sides of the Committee is what I and the Green Party have been banging on about for the last decade and, indeed, much longer. I was looking back at an interview I did with Red Pepper just after I was elected as Green leader in 2012, talking about how people were being left in cold homes, mourning something that has not been mentioned tonight but that we really should talk about: the hideous level of the UK’s excess winter deaths. That picks up the point from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about the way our society is going backwards in life expectancy, particularly healthy life expectancy.

Green policy for decades has said that environmental and social justice are indivisible. By environment, we mean the physical built environment as well as the natural environment. So you will not find any Green names on any of these amendments, because we did not need to be there. Nearly all these amendments have full cross-party backing, including from the Conservative Party, and non-party backing—and I join many others in applauding the huge amount of work done by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, on the issue of buildings. All this fits together. In Oral Questions earlier today, in a debate about diets, the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, said that it is not just about diets; it is also about exercise. Well, how about we have homes built with active transport in mind; how about we have walking paths, cycling paths and safe ways to get around?

The noble Lord just referred to access to nature and a children’s right to nature. How about we write that into law and say that every child has that right? The proposals in this amendment point us in that direction and put them, crucially, into the Bill. I am not going to repeat everything that has been said, because so much has been said. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, picked up something I have long been banging on about, and that is security by design. Rather than talking about bobbies on the beat, rather than trying to deal with the problem we have already created, let us build out the problem of neighbourhoods that work for people and that are secure.

I am going to really restrain myself here, because I could just get so excited hearing so many things that I agree with from every side of the Committee, but I will not: I am going to do the classic Green thing and point out some hard truths. One of these is that, while I said this was green heaven, the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, put some silver sprinkles on that heaven by bringing up growth. We have had growth for decades; we have chased GDP growth and look where it has got us. Look at the actual fabric of our society, the utter ill health, mental and physical, of our society. I say to both of the largest parties, who are currently waging a political duel about who can offer more growth: let us talk about the healthy society that the amendments here would collectively put together in the Bill.

The other awkward truth is what is behind all this. Who is building these homes that immediately need to be retrofitted to be even basically liveable and healthy? Who is building these homes in places where there is no public transport and no provision for active transport? We have a handful of mass housebuilders who are driven by profit. It is the legal responsibility of the directors to maximise profit, which is why we need these amendments to the Bill. All parts of our society need to see that there are controls on the profit motive, so our society works for people and planet and does not keep being milked for profit at the cost of the rest of us.

We have to have these controls and rules, and these rules have to come from government, and from Parliament if they are not going to come directly from government. I would say that your Lordships’ House has a huge opportunity with this Bill, and not just this Bill: tomorrow, we will be on the Energy Bill; and how about Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, who has a big drive on for solar panels on every suitable new home? Why on earth not? We need to join all this up and make it happen: this is our responsibility to the people of today for the climate, and our responsibility to the people of the future.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I have been listening to an excellent debate, and I just want to say one thing that relates to Amendment 484 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, and others. I just hope that, when my noble friend is responding or takes some of these very important points away, he responds not simply to the question of what is required in Building Regulations but what is achievable in terms of the sustainable framework for buildings. I declare a registered interest as counsel to Low Associates, which, between 2018 and 2020 was working with the European Commission on Level(s), which is a European Commission sustainable framework for buildings.

Such certification schemes exist. In this country, we have the Building Research Establishment’s environmental assessment method; the Americans have Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design; in France, they have gone further and legislated in RE 2020. The point I want to make is that, yes, we should focus on what is needed in order to secure an assessment of whole life-cycle carbon emissions in a building, but actually that is not enough, in my view. We should be increasingly looking at greenhouse gas emissions in total, at a circular economy and the reuse and recycling of materials, including in the demolition of buildings or the repurposing of buildings. We should be looking at water use and water resources. And we can put these, as many organisations increasingly do in certification schemes, in formats that are also very relevant to the performance assessment, including the cost assessment, of buildings, for those who have to invest in buildings, and indeed, in the public sector for those whose job it is to procure buildings.

We have structures that are available. We can see both voluntary schemes and—in the case of France and one or two others—legislative schemes that can focus on the broader environmental, health-related and social objectives of our buildings. These schemes recognise that, across Europe, 36% of greenhouse gas emissions are derived from our building stock. We have to deal with this; it is a central part of our environmental objectives. I hope Ministers are looking at both the statutory minimum requirements and a certification process that encourages the whole industry to move to a higher level of performance.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, yesterday I had the privilege of walking along a body of water called Frenchman’s Creek, which—some noble Lords may know—was made famous by the novel of Daphne du Maurier. I was walking through what is one of the remains of the UK’s temperate rainforest. I was in a green space, and I was next to a blue space, which fed out into the Helford River, which went out into the channel. You could see the ocean beyond that. That is why I support Amendment 241, in particular. This amendment is all about giving everybody access to those green and blue spaces, which is a privilege I have, living in the far south-west of this nation. I was walking, but I might have been running or cycling, although I do not think I would have been wheeling. All those types of exercise are absolutely vital to everybody.

To me, the theme of this debate has been that if we really want to level up, as my noble friend Lord Stunell mentioned, health and life expectancy are fundamental to that. That is why I support Amendment 241 and many others here as well. I hope that the Government will be able to positively respond to that.

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[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak in particular to Amendments 200 and 205 which are tabled in my name. I will also talk about one or two other amendments in this group, which were very helpfully introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, who set out not only the purposes of her amendments but gave a very straightforward description of all the other amendments. I am most grateful for that.

As noble Lords will have heard, Amendment 200 would enable a joint spatial development strategy to

“specify or describe employment sites the provision of which the participating authorities consider to be of strategic importance to the joint strategy area”.

The reason for this is that at this point in Schedule 7 there is reference to infrastructure that is relevant to the joint strategy area as a whole, not just to one participating authority. There is then a reference to affordable housing. I am not quite sure where that came from, since it is not obviously the case that affordable housing necessarily has implications of strategic importance beyond the participating authority in which the affordable housing is to be provided, but leave that on one side.

If one is to identify and specify in this part of Schedule 7, which is about making a spatial development strategy and looking at what is of strategic importance, it seems fairly obvious that employment sites—which, by their nature, will be the large employment sites—absolutely give rise to a need for them to be identified in a joint spatial development strategy. That links directly to the question of infrastructure and, in due course, to housing need. The infrastructure point is where the SDS really comes from. The SDS is about enabling that strategic planning to be achieved.

On a later group I will reiterate a broad point, which I will return to on a number of occasions in our debates, which is that, if we do nothing else, I hope we can identify and move towards opportunities for the planning processes to be co-ordinated, not just land use planning but transport planning, utilities planning, power supply and water supply. These all need to be properly integrated to have the best overall effect.

How is this to be achieved? I should remind noble Lords again that I chair the Cambridgeshire Development Forum; that is a registered interest of mine. Back at the beginning of the year, we had a very good presentation by Graham Pointer from WSP, who worked on the integrated planning processes in New South Wales. The essence of it was very straightforward: integrated planning of land use, transport, power, water and the environment and ensuring that these plans were then able to be funded together. We are not going to get into the funding mechanisms, but we can certainly ensure that there are integrated plans, ideally on integrated timetables.

One would imagine that this is very straightforward and it should be possible to make it happen. It almost never happens in the places I go to. There are constantly different tiers of administration in local areas that are conducting different aspects of planning at different times and with different parameters. We really need to try to integrate planning. If my noble friends on the Front Bench can push that forward, using spatial development strategies, that would be really useful. At the Westminster Social Policy Forum, I chaired a discussion on the OxCam corridor the Friday before last. It was one of the strongest messages to come out. Here is a key economic area. On travel to work areas, as a consequence of, for example, the east-west rail development, those areas may well be extended, so that the travel to work area for Cambridge extends potentially to new sites and settlements in Bedfordshire, and the travel to work area for Oxford and Harwell might well extend increasingly to settlements in and around Milton Keynes.

Increasingly, we have different authorities in different counties whose planning processes need to be co-ordinated and integrated together. Spatial development strategies are a way of doing that. I am old enough to remember when we had the Standing Conference of East Anglian Local Authorities and we used to do planning processes through regional mechanisms. We do not have regional planning now but that does not mean that we need to abandon the concept of strategic planning. Strategy does not require us to have integrated and large-scale authorities; it just means that the authorities need to come together.

Amendment 200 is specifically about employment sites, because of their relative strategic importance to an area or combined areas. Amendment 205 is about bringing additional authorities with a role to play into the process. I am grateful to the County Councils Network for its assistance in shaping an amendment for this purpose. I added the reference to travel to work areas, so I am particularly pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, commended that it should extend specifically to those authorities within a travel to work area, even if they are not one of the participating authorities. That is why we want to focus particularly on district councils, which may not join in the SDS but need to be consulted in the process. Also, counties and county combined authorities should be included in the consultation.

This engagement and consultation is in relation to their functions but it does not make them participants in the spatial development strategy itself. It does not give them a veto over the spatial development strategy but is confined to their bringing to the party the things that they can do. Given that for counties it includes something as integral as transport planning, this is fundamental to a spatial development strategy being able to work effectively. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for signing that amendment. I confess that I cannot see that we can put counties into the spatial development strategies as such, because of the difficulties of their not having planning powers—this is a combination of those that do have the planning powers—but it is absolutely right that they should be involved.

Apart from my own amendments, I want to say a word about Amendment 199. When I read it, I asked myself why the combined authorities are not part of this. The only reason I can think of is that they already have a non-statutory spatial strategy power. Frankly, I think that should come to the party. If noble Lords have a moment, I suggest they look at pages 288 and 299 of the Bill, and the new subsections at 15AI to be inserted. This is about what happens when a combined authority is created, and where these areas are already engaged in a joint spatial development strategy. It is awful. Basically, it collapses and it is cancelled; it is all withdrawn. That is the last thing you want. Where participating authorities are working together on a spatial development strategy, the creation of a combined authority should supplement that and enable them to accomplish it more effectively, not cause it all to be withdrawn or cancelled. The language is terrible, but the intention seems to me to be wrong too. I would much rather combined authorities joined in.

In the Cambridge area, we have the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority. The need for planning in that key economic hub extends out from Cambridge to Royston in Hertfordshire, to Haverhill in Suffolk, to Thetford in Norfolk, and to Bedford and Cranfield. It is obviously a candidate that is not only economically important but requires the joint working of local authorities and integrated planning across a wider region. It seems to me that spatial development strategies are a good thing, designed to enable that to happen, but we need the legislation to be more permissive. I would particularly focus on Amendment 205. I hope my noble friend will indicate that Ministers are sympathetic to the ability of counties, and other county combined authorities, to get involved in this way.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow 11 minutes of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, explaining the amendments. I have tabled amendments in this group and supported others because of the potential importance of strategic planning in tackling the climate emergency. We need to embed it in everything that councils do, alongside solving the acute housing crisis in this country.

Mine are probing amendments to find out how the Government see the role of county councils within the production of a joint spatial development strategy. County councils sit one tier above planning authorities, but many have strategic functions—for example, transport, health, social care or education. It seems slightly odd that they do not have a planning role as well.

Schedule 7 as currently drafted would need participating planning authorities to consult the county council once a draft strategy has been produced. It seems to me that this perhaps misses the opportunity to involve county councils actively in the development of the strategy, which I think they could very much contribute to. Taken to its highest level, the county council could even initiate the process and convene the planning authorities to work together. It seems to me that that is likely to happen anyway.

I would like to know the Minister’s thinking on how the Government see the role of county councils in strategic planning and whether they might explore the opportunity of more fully involving counties in spatial development plans.

For most Bills, the more I get involved the more fascinating they become. This Bill is an example of that not working at all. I am finding it incredibly difficult, and I sympathise with the Minister dealing with it. It is very difficult to find a coherent thread through this whole Bill. I applaud her and the Labour Front Bench for toughing it out.

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[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, how do I follow that? I will not, as it is dangerous territory.

This is a very interesting and important debate because it is about creating part of the hierarchy of a plan-led process. At the moment, we have quite a mixed pattern across England. Obviously, London has the ability to make a spatial strategy policy and plan; so do just some of the metro combined authorities, as they are known. In 2018, there was a statutory instrument which enabled three combined authorities to create spatial strategic plans: they were Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region and the West of England. The others do not. Why not?

Here is an opportunity to create a more coherent approach to spatial development strategies across the country. I am speaking as someone living in a metro area, in West Yorkshire. It does not have the ability to make a spatial development plan but is getting round it by creating lots of plans which it hopes will be adopted by the constituent authorities so that it, in essence, has one. That is not satisfactory because what is needed is an overarching approach that all the constituent authorities can agree on. At the minute, it is a series of plans for different elements—for example, flooding, transport or economic development.

It is not just the county areas which are being omitted from a coherent approach. I hope that, given this debate, the Minister will be able to give us some hope that there will be a bit more coherence attached to this for all the metro mayors and—as has quite rightly been argued—for the counties. It is a nonsense otherwise. I do not know how you can plan, certainly for economic development and transport infrastructure, unless you have an overall approach which a spatial development strategy would enable.

I was very taken with what the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said about thinking about which elements we would want included in a spatial development strategy. He quite rightly included economic development in Amendment 200. I do not know how you could have a spatial development strategy without thinking about economic development and setting aside sites for business development. That must be included.

Having said that, you need to include transport infrastructure. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said, climate change must be a part of that as well. Alongside that, if you have housing sites and a broad approach to spatial development and business development, you need to think about public service facilities. At the moment, even in a big metro area such as where I am, these are often so piecemeal, and it is so frustrating. Why can we not have people think about what you need for schools, hospitals, and local general practices, for instance? What about thinking about provision for nature, which was the subject of the first group of amendments this afternoon on local nature recovery plans? That ought to be integrated into an approach to spatial development, as well as leisure facilities. All that needs to be there.

I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, who talked about using travel to work areas as the boundary. That makes it extraordinarily difficult if those are not coterminous with the local authority boundaries which are being used. I will give noble Lords an example from my own experience. Travel to work areas in West Yorkshire include York, Barnsley in South Yorkshire and even Doncaster. People from Manchester come and work in West Yorkshire and Leeds and vice versa.

One of the challenges for the Minister is to try to come up with an answer to what boundaries are used because Schedule 7 talks, quite rightly, about the constituent authorities and members of a combined authority, a combined county authority or even—I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Deben—just a county council. You need to know what boundaries you are using.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am sorry to interrupt, but I think it is actually a bit simpler than that. The participating authorities that choose to be in the spatial development strategy choose to be in it and bring their territory with them. Everybody else, from my point of view in Amendment 205, are other authorities that are consulted. They are not making the strategy, they are consulted about it, so their geography does not matter so much.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I do not think that there is a distinction. They can be, and will be, part of it. I am sure that they will be part of whether that particular geographic area or group of councils will decide to go to a spatial strategy in the first place—that is how local government works. But I will give it some more thought; I am sure that we will come back to the issue on Report.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Before my noble friend moves on from this point about counties, can she confirm whether, when she says that they are a statutory consultee, she is referring to new Section 15A), to be inserted by Schedule 7, where they are consulted after the preparation of a draft, which is then deposited with various people? That is substantively different from securing the advice and participation of counties, related districts and others in the preparation of that draft spatial development strategy.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I will take the point back and consider it further, because some important issues have been brought up. I will make sure that, having given it some thought, we will discuss it further before Report.

--- Later in debate ---

I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I will contribute to this group in relation to the two amendments in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham. In existing legislation, Section 19(1B) and (1C) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 states that:

“Each local planning authority must identify the strategic priorities for the development and use of land in the authority’s area… Policies to address those priorities must be set out in the local planning authority’s development plan documents (taken as a whole).”


Therefore, the legislation has it that strategic priorities must be set out and policies must be set out to meet them.

Paragraph 21 of the National Planning Policy Framework in the consultation document recently issued says that:

“Plans should make explicit which policies are strategic policies. These should be limited to those necessary to address the strategic priorities of the area”.


Paragraph 17 states that the development plan

“must include strategic policies to address each local planning authority’s priorities for the development and use of land in its area.”

Therefore, the legislation is carried through into the National Planning Policy Framework. Also, the NPPF is clear that there is an important distinction to be made between strategic and non-strategic policies. I will not dwell on those now, as it is not relevant for this purpose. Suffice to say that “strategic” in front of policies seems important.

However, the Government have decided to omit “strategic”, to omit any reference to strategic priorities or a requirement that the local plan in a plan-making process should identify those priorities and show how policies meet them. I cannot for the life of me understand why. I admit that these are probing amendments to find out why. I do not think that, as a proposition, the structure of the NPPF in paragraphs 17 and 21 should be left stranded, with the relevant legislative provisions in Section 19 of the 2004 Act being omitted and not being substituted with anything in the current legislation that gives rise to that part of the NPPF.

The Government may say, “Well, it’s guidance and that’s fine—that’s what we’re saying”. Until now it has been perfectly understood that there is a legislative structure, and that the guidance follows it. I am not sure that we should arrive at a position where there is guidance with no legislative structure underpinning it. I cannot see any mischief in putting the strategic priorities and strategic policies back in. I see no mischief in putting “strategic” in front of “policies”. It avoids any lack of clarity about what kind of policies we are talking about. I cannot see why the Bill should not be amended to put it in line with where the current situation is and where the NPPF intends to go.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I briefly follow-up on that question which the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has left hanging.

We seem to have several moving parts here. I do not want to detain anybody any longer than necessary. We have the guidance of the NPPF, and the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has outlined its current impact on how local plans are developed. We now have the statutory NDMPs. Eventually we will get used to that acronym, I guess. Earlier this evening, the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, told noble Lords that she thought that the occasions of conflict between the NDMPs and local plans would be very rare, so rare that they did not need referencing but, on the other hand, possibly so onerous that it would be burdensome to make every one be referred back to your Lordships.

However, the political context of the NDMPs is of trying to retrieve a situation that was created last year by multiple changes in direction within the department, and by Ministers, about what they wanted local plans to achieve. Do they want them to achieve a very large number of houses, no houses at all, or as many houses as the local area thinks are appropriate?

All that will be resolved when—eventually—the NDMPs are published, because that is when we will be told what the Government intend local plans to produce. At that point it seems foreseeable—I say only foreseeable, not certain—that there will be areas of conflict between the citizens’ assemblies brought forward by the noble Baroness’s amendment and the common consultation process that we have traditionally followed, as the local plan emerges and the NDMPs dictate a different course of action. Where does the guidance to which the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, referred fit into that? Which fits into what and at which part?

In an earlier debate, the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, also said, perhaps not with the conviction that I had hoped to hear, that, in the event of a neighbourhood plan being more up to date than a local plan—hence in date—it would stand up against an NDMP central government directive. I would be delighted if that is true, but I would be substantially surprised if she says that she did say that; I must have misheard something.

We have some moving parts here, and it is a terribly inconvenient time of the day to resolve those difficulties. A lengthy letter may be the solution, but I just pose those questions. This is the fundamental way in which the current Government are aiming to square a circle out of their national planning policy. Whether they want more houses, where they want them and how fast—all those things—are driven by what comes out of local plans, and they will be framed by what is in the NDMPs, which are not published. Forgive me if I am jumping to a conclusion here; perhaps the planning management policy that comes out will say, “It is okay, guys; do your own thing and send your local plans in when they are ready”, but I have a feeling that that is not the context in which they are being drawn up.

Anything that the noble Earl or the noble Baroness can say to clarify that situation, either this evening or in a subsequent written report, would be gratefully received on this side, because we are baffled and bemused by how this is all supposed to hang together, as things stand.

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[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, this group of amendments addresses local plans: the critical planning documents that local planning authorities prepare with their communities to plan for sustainable growth.

Amendment 198, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, would require deliberative democracy forums to be involved in the early stages of plan-making. Yes, I have seen this work, and very successfully, but there are other ways of doing it as well so I do not think we would want to be too prescriptive. However, I thank the noble Baroness for this amendment because it provides me with the opportunity to talk about community engagement.

The English planning system already gives communities a key role so that they can take an active part in shaping their areas and, in so doing, build local pride and belonging. We are not changing this; in fact, we are strengthening it through the Bill. Communities must be consulted on local plans and on individual planning applications. However, we know that current levels of engagement can sometimes fall below our ambitions. That is why, through the Bill, we will be increasing opportunities for communities to get involved in planning for their area to ensure that development is brought forward in a way that works best for local people.

As I mentioned earlier, the Bill reforms the process for producing a local plan so that it is simpler, faster and easier for communities to engage with. A number of measures in the Bill will create wholly new opportunities for people to engage with planning in their communities. Neighbourhood priorities statements will make it easier and quicker for local communities to set out the priorities for their area. Similarly, mandatory design codes will ensure that communities will be directly involved in making rules on how they want the new developments in their area to look and feel.

Measures to digitise the planning system will also transform the way that information about plans, planning applications and the evidence underpinning them is made available. We have funded 45 pilots, including in councils that have some of the most disadvantaged communities in the country, to demonstrate how digital approaches to engagement can make the planning system more accountable, democratic and inclusive. We have also committed to producing new guidance on community, which will show the different ways in which communities and industry can get involved and highlight best practice, including the opportunity that digital technology offers.

I hope that I have made clear the work that we are already doing to drive forward progress in improving community engagement. With regard to the three pilots from DCMS, I will undertake to ask that department where they are and what they intend to do with them, including discussing them with the LGA. I will come back to the noble Lord when I have an answer.

On Amendments 209 and 211 in the names of my noble friends Lord Lansley and Lord Young of Cookham—I keep thinking that we are getting to the 2000s of these because we have been going so long—the Government want the planning system to be truly plan-led, to give communities more certainty that the right homes will be built in the right places. To achieve that, plans will be given more weight in decision-making. They will be faster to produce and easier to navigate and understand. We expect that future local plans should continue to provide a positive vision for the future of each area, and policies to deliver that vision. However, as was remarked in the other place, currently communities and applicants can face an alphabet soup of planning documents and terms, leaving all but the most seasoned planning professionals confused; so the Bill introduces a simple requirement for authorities to prepare a single local plan for their area, and provides clear requirements on what future local plans must, and may, include. Authorities may wish to include strategic priorities and policies in future local plans. There is nothing in the Bill to stop them.

There was quite a discussion provided by my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham on homes, and also the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, on things such as build-out. I have looked forward, and these issues will be discussed in much more detail in future debates, so if those noble Lords do not mind if I do not answer them today, I might answer them on Thursday. Perhaps we could wait for the relevant groups of amendments on those two things.

On the specific subject of local plan polices to deliver sustainable economic growth, I make it clear that we are retaining the current legal requirement at Section 39 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 for authorities to prepare plans with the objective of contributing to the achievement of sustainable development.

I turn to Amendment 212, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage. This amendment would amend Schedule 7 to the Bill to allow a local planning authority—

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My noble friend said that there was nothing in the Bill that stops local authorities specifying what are strategic policies. My point is a completely contrary one to that. It is that the NPPF says that they should set out what their strategic priorities and strategic policies are; so why does the Bill not say that?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I do not think that we have got to the NPPF yet. It is out for review, and let us see what is in it.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My point is that we know what the Government are proposing to say in the NPPF. The Bill is inconsistent with that. Is my noble friend suggesting that she has already decided that the NPPF will not make a distinction between strategic and non-strategic policies? Frankly, that is not going to happen. If she looks at the green-belt section, the distinction between strategic and non-strategic policies in relation to green-belt designation is an absolutely central distinction.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

No, I am saying that we have not made that decision yet, but this is as it is in this part of the Bill.

Amendment 212, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, would amend Schedule 7 to the Bill to allow local planning authorities to use their local plan to amend the details of existing outline planning permissions, so that they are in accordance with the adopted local plan. Our planning reforms seek to ensure that plans, produced following consultation with local communities, have a greater influence over individual planning decisions to ensure that development reflects what those local communities want. In particular, our new decision-making framework under Clause 86 will deliver to a more plan-led system, providing greater certainty for these communities.

Enabling local plans to effectively revise existing outline planning permissions, even where development has already started, undermines this certainty. It also runs counter to the long-standing position that the grant of planning permission is a development right that also provides the certainty that developers need to raise finance and implement the permission. I fear that small and medium-sized builders would be especially impacted by such a change and would face significant wasted costs and delays at a time when we need to support them.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Lords Chamber

Debate on Amendment 183 continued.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I nearly lost that chance, having sat here for several days waiting for this. I agree with everything my noble friend Lord Young said on the amendments he and I have jointly tabled in this group, except for one word: he referred to his “chequered” career, but I would say “distinguished”. We will replace “chequered” with “distinguished”, but otherwise I agree with everything he said. That helps, because it means that I do not have to repeat the arguments he made.

I want to speak to Amendments 184A and 187A very briefly. I will also explain Amendment 185, which my noble friend did not dwell on, and say a word or two about Amendment 183—the lead amendment in this group, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage—which he did refer to. As my noble friend said, the issue we are turning to now is the plan-led system. How local plans are to be made and what the relationship is to be between the local plan and the national development management policies are very important questions.

To paraphrase one of the key questions that arises out of this, which I think we need to understand now in order to address these issues in the Bill at a later stage, would the Government be kind enough to explain to what extent the provisions presently in the National Planning Policy Framework are going to be national development management policies in the future? They will then acquire a different status—although, I have to say, it is quite difficult in many cases for a local planning authority to proceed on the basis of operating with the guidance in the NPPF, because inspectors will look to the NPPF as a basis for the judgments they make on whether a plan is sound, and indeed whether determinations in themselves are sound on appeal. We may be looking at distinctions or differences between the NPPF and NDMP without there being that much of a difference between them. In practice, the legal differences are clear, and the extent to which the NPPF is going to be turned into NDMP and given that status is important, and we need to know that.

As my noble friend Lord Young said, the revised draft of the NPPF, which the Government have consulted on and have yet to tell us the final outcome of, states:

“Policies in local plans and spatial development strategies should be reviewed to assess whether they need updating at least once every five years”.


My noble friend referred to the loophole or the issue here, which is that local planning authorities decide for themselves whether that review turns into an updated local plan. I give him and the House one very specific example, which is close to me. I should remind the House, as I have mentioned previously, of my registered interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. East Cambridgeshire adopted a local plan on 21 April 2015, which covers the period up to 2031. In April 2020—five years later—the authority conducted a review and decided that it did not need to update the plan, save with respect to the housing supply numbers. So, it conducted a single-issue review.

I will not dwell on some of the issues, but I have various complaints about this. First, there is the idea that the housing number is unrelated to other issues in the plan—that the housing supply in the decade ahead is unrelated to issues of environmental concern or whatever. That seems to have been ignored by them. However, I make the point that the inspector, who conducted an examination in public in the latter part of last year, said that it was not in his remit at all to look at whether the plan should be updated or not, whether anything other than housing should be updated or not, and indeed whether the final date of the plan should be beyond 2031. Of course, what the local authority is planning to do in this case is to update its housing figures, but when it has done so, it will extend for only about six years rather than the 15 years that the NPPF would imply. Notwithstanding that, they got away with it. So I very much agree with my noble friend and hope that the Minister will think hard about how we might make sure that we have local plans.

However, our Amendments 184A and 187A go precisely to the issue of requiring local plans to be up to date. If they are not up to date, in our view it cannot be right that the same principles apply in terms of the compliance or otherwise of determinations made on planning applications if the local plan to which they relate is out of date. There must be a distinction. Our amendments simply add “up-to-date” in front of “development plan.” They do not say, “What’s the relationship between a planning application and a determination on that planning application in relation to a local plan that is no longer up to date?” We need to resolve that. I suggest to my noble friend on the Front Bench that Ministers should think about whether there is as yet something they can do to distinguish between the proper relationship between development plans and in this particular instance determinations of planning applications, which should be made according to an up to date local plan, and local plans that had been adopted but are now out of date. They need to address the question of whether they are proper material considerations but not necessarily determinative. That seems to be the right way to go.

Amendment 185, which is in my name, that of my noble friend, and in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, relates to the question of a determination on a planning application and that it should be made in accordance with the local plan. The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 says in Section 38(6):

“If regard is to be had to the development plan for the purpose of any determination to be made under the planning Acts the determination must be made in accordance with the plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise”.


It has said that since 2004, so there is considerable case law relating to this, and those working in the planning system have experience of working with that. They know that it means that, in making a determination on a planning application, local planning authorities have to weigh material considerations. However, courts pretty much do not second-guess the weight that planning officers and planning committees give to various considerations in considering an application. We have had nearly 20 years of that.

The Government have rewritten this bit and inserted the word “strongly”—

“unless material considerations strongly indicate otherwise”.

That says to me that two things are going to happen. First, it is the Government’s intention to limit and restrict the circumstances in which decisions are made other than in accord with a local plan or with national development management policies. That means—which goes to the point that we have been debating in this group—that it reduces the role of the planning committee and the local planning authority, because they do not balance the weight any more. Most of the material considerations, almost by definition, will not be enough to indicate that they should do other than what would be demanded by the local plan and the NDMP.

The second thing that will inevitably result from this is that there will be a large amount of litigation, because the question of what “strongly” means in this context will be hard to determine. There will not be case law or precedent—a large number of decisions will not previously have been made. Where does “strongly” change the balance? How is that weight to be shifted? It is very unwise for the Government to be proceeding down this path. It would create a better balance across the Bill generally and we would be better off in many cases just to leave things as they are if they cannot demonstrate that there is a mischief to which this is the answer.

I will stop there, but I just want to refer to one other thing. I thought that Amendment 216, which is not in my name but in that of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, rather pointed to an issue. Schedule 7 on page 294, which is about plan making, would take out a rather curious few words where the Government say that local plans must not

“be inconsistent with or (in substance) repeat any national development management policy”.

I just have a question: what is the point of national development management policies if it is not essentially to write for local planning authorities large amounts of their local plan? If the local planning authority then puts that language into its local plan, does that mean it is repeating it or incorporating it? What does “repeat” mean in this context? I thought the whole point was that local plans would “repeat” national development management policies, yet we are being told in the legislation that that is not what they are to do. That is a genuine question to which I really do not know the answer, but I hope we can find out a bit more from my noble friend later.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, my name is on Amendment 191A, tabled by my noble friend Lady Thornhill, as is that of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. It stipulates the process for the Secretary of State to designate and review a national development management policy, including minimum public consultation requirements and a process of parliamentary scrutiny based on processes set out in the Planning Act 2008, as amended, for national policy statements. It is an amendment to Clause 87.

Clause 87, which is a matter of only 20 or so lines, defines the meaning of “national development management policy” as

“a policy (however expressed) of the Secretary of State in relation to the development or use of land in England, or any part of England, which the Secretary of State by direction designates as a national development management policy.”

It then says that the Secretary of State can revoke a direction and modify a national development management policy. It goes on to say:

“Before making or revoking a direction … or modifying a national development management policy, the Secretary of State must ensure that such consultation with, and participation by, the public or any bodies or persons (if any) as the Secretary of State thinks appropriate takes place.”


In planning terms, this is the most gross act of centralisation that I can recall from the various Bills we have had relating to planning policy.

--- Later in debate ---

Therefore, while I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Taylor and Lady Hayman, for their amendments, I hope I have explained why we believe the current requirement for local development plans to be consistent with national development management policies is needed to achieve some of our key aims for planning reform. That is why we do not support these amendments.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I hope my noble friend will forgive me for interrupting. I understand the point she is making about Amendment 216, and why she is resisting removing the idea that local plans must not be inconsistent with national development management policies, but it also says, “or (in substance) repeat”.

I am trying to understand. Let us take the chapter in the NPPF on green belt. The first part is about plan-making for the green belt, and the second part is about proposals coming forward within green belt land and the criteria that should be applied as to whether or not an application would be accepted. On that latter part, is my noble friend saying that the local plan cannot repeat that—that it must therefore refer to it but not repeat it? Is that the point she is making?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The whole idea of moving national policies away from local policies is that we do not have to repeat them. I will reflect on what my noble friend says about how it is referred if an area has a particular issue with something such as the green belt and come back to him, because I think he has a point.

Amendment 221, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Best, seeks to require older people’s housing needs assessments to be included in the evidence for local plans and would require local authorities to consider the needs for older people’s housing when preparing such plans. While I entirely understand the sentiment behind this amendment, the proposed approach is not needed. National policy already sets strong expectations, and we recently consulted on strengthening this further. The existing National Planning Policy Framework makes clear that the size, type and tenure of housing needed for different groups in the community, including older people, should be assessed and reflected in planning policies. In 2019, we also published guidance to help local authorities implement the policies that can deliver on this expectation.

I also make it clear to noble Lords that, to further improve the diversity of housing options available to older people and to boost the supply of specialist elderly accommodation, we have proposed to strengthen the existing policy by adding a specific expectation that, when ensuring the needs of older people are met, particular regard is given to retirement housing, housing with care and care homes. We know these are important types of housing that can help support our ageing population.

Furthermore, there is already a provision in the Bill that sets out that the Secretary of State must issue guidance for local planning authorities on how their local plan and any supplementary plans, taken as a whole, should address housing needs that result from old age or disability. These are strong legislative and policy safeguards which should ensure that the needs of older people are taken fully into account. For that reason, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Best, will understand why we do not support this amendment.

I note that there is a question from my noble friend Lord Young and the noble Lord, Lord Best, on the task force. I will go back to the department and ask for an update. I can assure noble Lords that I will give them one in the next couple of days—certainly before Recess or Report.

I hope I have said enough to enable the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, to withdraw her Amendment 183 and for the other amendments in this group not to be moved when reached.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 15th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe (Con)]

I obviously listened with great care to the noble Baroness when she made her initial intervention. I take on board the point she made, which I understand. It was made by other noble Lords. I am trying to set out for the Committee the direction the Government are coming from in framing the Bill’s provisions.

I just want to emphasise a point that I made in an earlier debate, which may not be sufficiently appreciated. I look in particular at the noble Lord, Lord Mann. The Bill in no way removes any powers or functions of district councils, which are rightly their own sovereign bodies and will continue to exercise their own powers and functions within the broader context of the CCA. Indeed, as we have already debated, we fully expect that, in many cases, CCAs will decide to give district councils a seat at the table as non-constituent members, should they deem that this will usefully inform decision-making. It would be open to a CCA to give voting rights to such a non-constituent member, if it considered this appropriate. It is right that we should give CCAs that freedom. The sub-strategic matters for which district councils are primarily responsible will often be directly germane to the strategic issues being considered and decided on at CCA level.

I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, for the points he made. As I am sure he is aware, we will immerse ourselves in the issues he raised on national development plans when we move to the parts of the Bill relating to planning, but I hope for now that that explanation will assist the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, in understanding why—

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I apologise for intervening at this late stage, having made no speech, but I would like to ask a couple of questions of my noble friend that relate to Clause 43. The first is a simple one. There is a reference to a combined authority being able to make a proposal relating to a new combined county authority. I am confused, since I understood that a combined county authority would not be able to encompass any part of the area of an existing combined authority. Is it anticipated that circumstances might arise where a combined authority would transfer some of its area to a new combined county authority? That is just a question for future reference.

Secondly, the clause includes a reference, which we have seen before, to an “economic prosperity board”—which I take in most cases to mean local enterprise partnerships—having the right to make a proposal or having the requirement to consent to a proposal for a new CCA. The Government announced in the Budget today that they intend, as they put it, to withdraw support for local enterprise partnerships from April 2024. What does this imply? How does the business community have a voice and through whom, since the Government intend the functions of the local enterprise partnerships to be devolved to local government? Would my noble friend at least agree that something might be said about this at an early stage, before we complete this section relating to what an economic prosperity board is supposed to do?

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, I think that my best course is to write to my noble friend on both issues. He is perfectly right that Clause 43(2)(e) refers to

“a combined authority the whole or any part of whose area is within the proposed area”

as being a body to which the section applies; that is to say, a body which may prepare a proposal for the establishment of a CCA for an area and submit that proposal to the Secretary of State. It would be wise of me to set down in writing the kinds of circumstances in which we envisage that particular geographic area playing a part in the formation of a CCA. On the questions my noble friend raised on economic prosperity boards, I again think it best that I should write to him.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, that the policy for CCA establishment and operation, as reflected in the Bill, neither belittles nor marginalises the important role played by district councils. When a CCA is formed, any district councils within its geographic radius will be important stakeholders—it is very hard to see how they could not be—albeit alongside many others. However, they cannot be a constituent member of a co-operative local government grouping whose membership is determined by reference to strategic functions and powers which are the primary province of upper-tier and unitary authorities. That is the logic.

--- Later in debate ---

I think that the proposals are all self-explanatory. This was the amendment lifted from the Commons, where it applied to planning committees only, but I would like it to apply to all committees, and plenary sessions of the council as well. I have set out the conditions in which that would be satisfied, for how the voting would be recorded and how, with a physical meeting, others could attend remotely as well. For those reasons, I prefer my Amendment 158 to Amendments 310 and 312D. I can see absolutely no reason why it should be the case that it would be only planning committees that would meet. I would like to see licensing committees and planning committees—all committees—as well as plenary committees being permitted to do so in that regard. I turn with a plea to my noble friend to look favourably on this amendment. With those few remarks, I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I shall presume to follow my noble friend and speak to Amendment 310 in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. I support my noble friend’s amendment, which is very helpful in setting out in full the potential structure of a power to enable local authorities to hold meetings remotely. Of course it does not require them to do so—it simply permits them to do so.

The story of this, essentially, is that during the pandemic the Coronavirus Act 2020 permitted local authorities to hold meetings remotely, and many did. That expired on 7 May 2021, and the Local Government Association and others sought a declaratory judgment from the High Court as to whether they could continue to meet remotely, in the absence of specific legislative provision. The High Court said that they could not—that it was clear that meetings required persons to be in the place required under the 1972 Act. Since 7 May 2021, they cannot proceed with remote meetings, which is a serious impediment, not least since the LGA’s chair at the time said that:

“The pandemic proved that using virtual meeting options can help councils work more effectively and efficiently and can in fact increase engagement from both councillors and residents”.


The first is fairly obvious; the second is particularly helpful. A survey conducted by the LGA back in November 2021 demonstrated that costs were lower for virtual meetings but also, and more significantly, public attendance could be higher at virtual meetings. It is very important to give local authorities those options.

The point that I come to is that the Government at the time, back in 2021, issued a call for evidence on remote meetings. We are now the best part of two years on and they have not proceeded on the basis of that call for evidence. I would hope or expect that the call for evidence demonstrated that this is an opportunity to assist local authorities to structure their meetings in a way that can maximise engagement and participation, and I am at a loss to know why they have not proceeded. At the time, of course, they said that there was a lack of a suitable legislative opportunity—well, here we are, and here it is. The Government have not put it in the Bill, but we have the option to do so. I may press my noble friend the Minister a little more than my noble friend Lady McIntosh might do: the time has come for the Government to get off the fence on this one. On Report, the best possible solution would be for them to bring forward their own amendment for this purpose.

There is a difference between the two amendments. Mine relates only to planning meetings and its structure is to create a regulation-making power for the Secretary of State. I suspect that, for that reason, it is preferable to the Government since, in Amendment 158, we have a regulation under the Coronavirus Act 2020 that is being turned into primary legislation. That is not always the most helpful way to structure things. I think the right way forward would be for the Government to introduce their own amendment on Report.

I was interested in this from the point of view of planning meetings, as part of the general process of trying to encourage efficient and effective decision-making in planning. I understand that there is an argument for this to be applied more generally, although it was obvious, from some of the references to evidence given before the High Court, that there is some hesitation on the part of experts about holding, for example, councils’ full or annual meetings virtually. The problem is the lack of personal interaction between councillors at such meetings and the difficulty of managing business under those circumstances. It is fair to say that simply giving local authorities this power would be a straight- forward way to do it, but I completely understand if some restrictions, particularly on full or annual council meetings, limited the exercise of that power. Either way, I hope that my noble friend indicates, whether definitely or otherwise, that the Government will think urgently about whether to bring forward measures to give local government this power in the Bill, through amendment on Report.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 158 and 310. Obviously Amendment 310 is more limited so I see it as a fallback, but I honestly cannot see any reason for the Government not to accept Amendment 158.

Covid obviously provided us with a lot of challenges, one of which was how to keep things going and how society and, for example, your Lordships’ House could still function. At the time, I thought that your Lordships’ House managed better than the other place. We were quicker to put in remote systems for voting and participating, which I thought was a huge advance in the methods that we used for debates and to create legislation.

I actually did not know that councils cannot meet virtually any more and think it is a terrible shame. I have been a councillor and it is really hard work. Going to council meetings on a cold wet night in November, December, January or February can be an extra challenge. Quite honestly, why on earth would we not do this? Virtual council meetings—and virtual meetings of your Lordships’ House—worked extremely well. We all found that we could work the mute button, although some have gone backwards on that. We still allow noble Lords to engage virtually, so it is logical for councillors.

Work has changed because of Covid. More people are working remotely and not going into the office as much. One of my daughters, although she has a full-time job, goes into the office only two days a week now. My partner goes into his office one day a month and my other daughter goes into her office once every two months. Even so, they all work extremely well and efficiently. I do not understand this regressive move.

There have been other regressive moves here. I loathe how we still start in the afternoons, even though we started earlier during Covid. It is easy to slip back into bad, old habits instead of taking new ideas forward and engaging in the best way possible. I hope that the Government see sense on this and, as is suggested, bring their own amendment forward. We would all support it.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

I just emphasise that housing is not just a desperately urgent social need but part of the mix of creating thriving multigenerational communities across the UK. Tackling housing supply and putting it front and centre of any housing mission is part of making this vision a concrete reality, and I really hope that the housing mission goes beyond mere platitudes and says, “Build more houses now!”

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am very glad to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, who has given us a very persuasive insight into a subject that I know we shall return to. I look forward to her contributing to further debates on the housing supply issue when we get to those parts of the Bill—perhaps in a fortnight’s time. We will have had a chance to take on board her excellent arguments.

I do not want to repeat what I said on Monday; I shall just precis it to this extent. I do not think we should put the missions in the Bill; we should have a process in the Bill that permits this House and the other place to consider the missions and metrics in detail every time the Government publish a statement. We can do that either by way of what I suggest in Amendment 25, which would give the two Houses the opportunity to debate such a statement; or the Government might at some point say that they should be published in draft and be the subject of debates by the two Houses. We are having that kind of debate today; it is exactly the kind of debate we ought to have every time there is such a statement or one is to be renewed, but at the moment, the Government simply lay it, publish it and that is it. That is not good enough.

I want to talk about two missions. I was not planning to say much about the first, but I was prompted by the amendment from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, so ably introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Best. I feel that we have been here before. My noble friend Lord Howe and I have definitely been here before. We published and introduced—he will have done it in this House—the Healthy Lives, Healthy People White Paper of November 2010, which followed and reflected into policy at the time Sir Michael Marmot’s Fair Society, Healthy Lives work, which we and the previous Government supported prior to the White Paper.

We are talking about a very difficult mission to define. We are talking about reducing inequalities in society, because the inequalities in society are the source of the inequalities in health outcomes. Let us at least look at how we can tackle the many things that are the social determinants of health and try to capture them in something like, for example, disability-free life expectancy. The Government have used healthy life expectancy, which I think is the same thing. We know that it is poor in this country, and we know of the lack of public health support—notwithstanding that we had a shift a decade ago to support for local governance in public health, which I think has actually been proven to be a good thing, but which has not been funded in the way that local government and the health service would have wished it. We had a very good and helpful debate on that when the noble Lord, Lord Addington, who is in his place, had his Private Member’s Bill, but I will not repeat all that now.

When one looks at the metrics intended to support the Government’s mission, it is very curious. Yes, we need a tobacco control plan, although I do not know quite what the Government’s tobacco control plan now is. Yes, we must reduce the prevalence of obesity, but I do not now know precisely what the Government’s obesity strategy is. But as far as the reduction of prevalence or impacts of diseases are concerned, only cancer is mentioned. I am with the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, here; I thought that in the NHS we had escaped from trying to elevate certain diseases to the point where they were regarded as more important than others. Certainly, when we talk about parity of esteem between mental and physical health, surely we must have parity of esteem between cardiovascular health and cancer diagnosis. Why do we regard one as more important than the other? There are metrics that could help us; the NHS outcomes framework was first established in about 2011 and is a work in progress, but is absolutely instrumental. It should be the basis, not the Government having a mission which picks one or two things out of the outcomes framework and regards them as important when others are not.

When I was Secretary of State, over a decade ago, we had, over time, been improving life expectancy in this country on average by one month in every year. That means that if you want to improve life expectancy by a year, on average it is likely to take you 12 years. Where does “five years” come from? Things have actually got worse, not better, since a decade ago—particularly since 2017, on the data. Based on what I remembered, it would take us 60 years to improve our healthy life expectancy by five years. The Health Foundation last March, after the missions White Paper was published, produced its own data. It believed that on the previous data it would take 75 years, but it had run it with the most recent data on life expectancy and healthy life expectancy since 2017, and the figure was 192 years. If we are to have a debate about the missions and metrics, let us get down into whether the metrics are reasonable. If they are not, they should be revised, because if we are going to be standing here in 2030—I hope we all are; disability-free life expectancy in the Lords is pretty good—we want to have achieved these missions. We do not want to have excuses for why we did not—for example, because the metric was not a reasonable one in the first place, or the Government have abandoned it.

I want to mention one other thing; at Second Reading, quite well on in the debate, the role of the private sector was mentioned. I just want to come back to mission 1 and this issue of the economy, because I am not quite sure why measuring pay is there. It is a measure of relative economic well-being, but targeting pay is not the answer. Targeting employment is a good answer; if people are in employment, pay will differ in different parts of the country because the cost of living and the economic structures differ significantly. Let us improve the economic structures, reduce the economic disparities and improve the economic growth in the less advantaged parts of this country, and the pay will come with them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I would like to go back on that specific issue because we would need to work with the Department of Health and Social Care and get its agreement. We are quite early in the establishment of the unit in order to do that, but I will take back that issue and come back to the noble Lord.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend. I am coming back to a point that she raised a moment ago on the Levelling Up Advisory Council, which I mentioned on Monday but did not at that time get an answer on whether it had met, what it discussed, what it said and to whom. I now discover that on 14 February a Minister in the department wrote to Clive Betts, the Select Committee chair, to say that the council had met several times, had met Ministers and was engaging in a research programme. It was interesting, because the letter said that the council had

“engaged in discussions on levelling up policy with stakeholders externally, including members attending an event with Carsten Schneider … Minister of State for East Germany and Equivalent Living Conditions, hosted by the German Embassy”.

Might the council engage at all with Parliament? We are told that the council has been around for a year, but I have had no engagement—no one from the council has come anywhere near me to suggest that it might talk to us about the levelling-up missions.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I do not know, but the council is already in train and working. On the fact that it has not come to Parliament, I will ask what the remit has been for the past year. It may have been a remit just to get together on some early work, but I will get an answer to my noble friend on that.