Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

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

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

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

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

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 4th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (CB)]

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

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

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

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

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

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

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

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

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


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

--- Later in debate ---

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

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

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

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

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

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

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

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

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

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 1st September 2025 Lords Chamber

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

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

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

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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[Lord Lansley (Con)]

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

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

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

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

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 25th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my registered interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum and the Oxfordshire Development Forum. I emphasise that my views on these issues are entirely my own.

A number of us are taking forward many of the issues that we discussed during the passage of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, including my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham. His point about the resourcing of planning authorities is really important. Something that the Government could do straight away, outside of the Bill, is enable the retention of level 7 apprenticeships for new planning officers, because the lack of those will make things difficult for local planning authorities.

In the time available, I will focus on one thing. As we discuss many issues in the Bill, I hope we can understand more about what the Government propose to use from the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act, how they are going to use it, and what they propose not to use. For example, the national development management policies are potentially extremely important in enabling local authorities to produce plans more quickly and efficiently. I hope that those local authorities going into the new plan-making process have early access to NDMPs, so that they are able to limit the extent to which they have to undertake unnecessary consultation.

This links to the debate we will have about a national scheme of delegation. On the face of it, the Government’s technical proposal, in so far as it substantially deviated from the original consultation with three options, went in the wrong direction. The national scheme of delegation should be, first, that planning officers should make decisions where applications are in line with an existing up-to-date local plan. That should be very straightforward. Secondly, they should make the decisions where the decision is, in effect, directly mandated by the national development management policies. We need to look at some of these additional planning issues before we get to the debates in Committee and on Report on the content of the Bill.

I hope that the provisions in the levelling-up Act in relation to neighbourhood plans and neighbourhood policy statements might be brought into force. In the absence of that, I hope that the Bill will use that. If the Government want more homes built in the places where people want them to be built, neighbourhood planning has shown itself to be an effective mechanism.

There are provisions relating to locally led urban development areas and locally led urban development corporations in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act, and my noble friend on the Front Bench referred to them. The noble Lord, Lord Best, advocated very forcibly the use of development corporations, but did not say which kind. I think we need to know from the Government whether they will make locally led urban development areas and development corporations available for this purpose, whether they plan to use government-controlled development corporations, or whether they plan, in line with the provisions of the devolution White Paper, to focus on mayoral development corporations. It is not just whether we have development corporations and what powers they have; it is what kind of development corporations. This will make a big difference when we hear from the New Towns Taskforce, which I hope we will do before the Summer Recess.

The final thing I want to say is that we all agree. I share many of the objectives of this Bill and look forward to debating it, with a view to strengthening the achievement of those objectives. We want to be able to deliver effectively on development plans, but we need up-to-date local plans to make that happen. At the moment, 70 local authorities are going to go under the old NPPF rather than the new one, and that will lose us the potential and requirement for something like 15,000 homes being built a year.

It is important that, with all these changes, we know how the Government are going to give us more pace in putting all the planning reforms in place, alongside this Bill.

English Devolution and Local Government

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend. I very well remember that speech from the former Prime Minister. We have already taken some steps during this year’s spending round to switch the funding formula back to where the need is most in our country for local government. We have put additional money into key areas such as special educational needs and adult care services. We made a further announcement yesterday about more funding for affordable housing, particularly to improve the quality of temporary and emergency accommodation.

In the spending review in the spring, we will do more to shift the balance back so that the spending review for local government will follow the needs in local areas. As we do that from one side, we also have mayors and unitary councils and strategic approaches; as each part of the country begins to grow, everybody will benefit.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I remind noble Lords of my registered interest in relation to Cambridgeshire and Oxfordshire. Those are two counties that will have county elections this May, yet they have received letters from the ministry saying that they must present initial plans on 21 March, which I assume is the day before purdah for those elections. Does it make any sense at all for those initial plans to be sent before the elections and before any administration that has been elected can come into place and put forward initial plans? Will the Minister delay that request from 21 March to the latter part of May at the very earliest?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I can give the noble Lord a very straightforward answer to that. No, we will not delay it, because we have a number of partners in local government coming to us who want to take part in this process. The proposal put forward on 21 March is an outline proposal; where there are new Administrations elected in May, there will be several months until the final proposal is due, which is at the end of November, where they can continue engagement with the Government and other partners, including the districts, to develop those final proposals.

If a new administration is elected in May, it is of course within their gift to depart from the interim plans set out by a previous administration, but we will continue working with all partners until we get to the 28 November deadline, when we expect final proposals to come in.

English Devolution

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My noble friend makes a good point. It is impossible to overstate the importance of having an accountable and transparent process for local government. I mentioned in my opening remarks that it is an absolute scandal that we have found ourselves in the position we have in relation to local government audit, with 1,000 audits outstanding—that is just not good enough. Accountability is absolutely vital. As well as a complete review of local government audit systems, and making sure that we have an audit service for all of local government that is fit for purpose, we will consult on something for mayoral combined areas. I do not know what it will be called, but it will be the equivalent of a local public accounts committee. We think that the work of the Public Accounts Committee in Parliament is helpful and useful, and we will consult with local government on whether a local public accounts committee, along similar lines, would be useful.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my declared interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. The Minister will know that I share her enthusiasm for strategic planning, but will she acknowledge that it may be some time before strategic authorities are established, or indeed before some strategic authorities have the necessary capability for strategic planning? In order to maintain momentum, will the Government issue guidance that will enable local planning authorities to go ahead with spatial strategies at a sub-regional level as quickly as possible?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for that comment. It is important that we get development moving as quickly as possible. The New Towns Taskforce will make recommendations to government on the best delivery approach when it reports in July next year. The appropriate delivery vehicle will always be place-specific, and we expect development corporations to be used in most cases. Mayors, local authorities and government can establish development corporations, and we look forward to engaging local partners to understand what will be the best delivery approach for them to support future growth. If these need to come forward sooner rather than later, we will work with local areas to make sure that we facilitate that as best as possible.

Building Homes

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my declared interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. Indeed, I am glad that the Minister has seen for herself the scale and the quality of the developments taking place in Cambridgeshire. Among those building out on those sites, one of the principal difficulties is that the Section 106 agreements for the delivery of affordable housing are not often able to be supported by contracts with registered providers.

Has the Minister seen the report from the Home Builders Federation today, which says that there are 17,000 such affordable homes that are not contracted for by RPs? Will she respond to that report? The Home Builders Federation is asking for a Written Ministerial Statement that would encourage local planning authorities to use cascade mechanisms under the Section 106 agreements to promote the delivery of those affordable homes. Will she and other Ministers direct Homes England to step in and take over these contracts, and themselves maintain the delivery of affordable homes?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for that question, because in a housing crisis where we have so many people in need of affordable homes, it has been such a shame that Section 106 homes that could have been funded were unable to be picked up because of the lack of capacity within affordable housing providers.

The Government have been very aware of the problems affecting the sale of Section 106 affordable housing. Alongside the National Planning Policy Framework, Homes England also launched a new clearing service to help unblock the delivery of these homes. This is a great role for Homes England to fulfil. The Government are now calling on all developers with uncontracted Section 106 affordable homes to proactively and pragmatically engage with this new service. We hope that this will be able to unlock some of the stalled Section 106 affordable homes which we know are there, waiting for those families who are desperate for housing. I hope that this service will take things forward.

Housebuilding: Regional Mayors

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is quite correct: we want to do that. Despite the very difficult Budget round this time, the Secretary of State for my department was able to achieve further funding for affordable homes of £500 million. That brings the total for affordable housing up to £3.1 billion.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, will the Minister confirm that the National Planning Policy Framework will be published before we rise for the Recess? In that, can we return to the question of metro mayors? Through their economic development activity, they are well equipped to add anticipated employment growth into the standard method for calculating future housing need. Will the Government incorporate that additional measure in their calculation?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for inviting me to Cambridge, which I visited last week. It was a good visit and I am grateful to him. I can commit to publish the NPPF before the House rises for Christmas. I will take his other point back to the department and get the noble Lord a written answer.

Building Homes

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Tuesday 30th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

As a new town girl, what the noble Lord has just said is music to my ears. When my new town was built, it was designed to provide all the infrastructure that families needed in a neighbourhood format, and I absolutely understand the points that he has made.

There is a “delivering community needs” section of the NPPF consultation document which should help communities in practice. The changes proposed would ensure that the planning system supports the increased provision and modernisation of key public services infrastructure such as hospitals, criminal justice facilities and all those aspects. They would also ensure the availability of a sufficient choice of post-16 education and early years places and enable a vision-led approach to be taken to transport planning where residents, local planning authorities and developers work together to set out the vision for how they want places to be, rather than simply projecting forward past trends. Further, they would enable the planning system to do more to support the creation of healthy places. We have had many a discussion in this Chamber about those aspects as well and I think that incorporates some of the points the noble Lord made about gardens and private and public open space to help communities to thrive. I hope that he will look at the consultation and respond to it; that would be really helpful.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest, as recorded in register, as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. The Minister will be aware that Cambridgeshire may be an area of particular interest from the point of view of any new towns or development corporation statements. Although we may not be here to see it, it would be very helpful for us to have the opportunity to interact with Ministers on whatever announcement is made tomorrow.

From the point of view of Cambridgeshire, the Minister will recall that during the passage of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act we talked about strategic planning. If the Government are not going to bring into force the joint strategic development strategy provisions of the levelling-up Act but are proposing a new strategic spatial development process, I think Cambridgeshire would be a very good place in which to test those arrangements—I hope the Minister might agree.

This is going to be a plan-led system, so making plans is very important, and I want to check one or two things about the new transitional arrangements. Can those who are making plans now and who have reached Regulation 19 for submission proceed on the basis of the old NPPF? Can those who have not reached that stage proceed as long as they can submit plans for examination by December 2026, but on the basis of the new NPPF? Others who cannot achieve that timetable will have to work to the new plan-making system, which is the one set out in the levelling-up Act. For clarity, I think that therefore means that the new plan-making system needs to be in place as soon as possible next year, and we need to see the regulations come forward for that. I also think it means that national development management policies, which the Government are planning to bring in, will have to be timed to coincide with the new plan-making system and—I hope this will be clear—not be applied to those making their plans and submitting them before December 2026 using the current NPPF. Otherwise, they will simply not make progress; they will wait for NDMPs, and I do not think we want them to be waiting for those.

I want to ask two other questions. The Statement does not refer to skills for construction, which are essential—we have to have the skills. We have to have the Construction Industry Training Board, and the others, making investments in the skills base to potentially build these homes, otherwise it simply will not be possible.

Finally, the budget of Homes England is important, but it is not the only mechanism for delivering affordable and social housing. About £4 billion a year comes from developer contributions; we need to see what the new landscape for developer contributions looks like after the reform of Section 106 and reform of the community infrastructure levy. I hope that the Minister will say that those too will come forward in short order.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for those points. There were several, but I will try to address them all. First, the new towns task force will work closely with local leaders and communities to make sure that we get the right homes in the right places. I am sorry to say that to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, but it is important. It will work on identifying potential locations within the next 12 months and deliver those large-scale developments as quickly as possible—one hopes, with spades in the ground at some sites by the end of this Parliament. That was my point about new towns; I cannot yet say whether those involved will be looking at Cambridge, but no doubt your Lordships will hear about that in due course.

On the strategic planning issues, our intention is to implement the new plan making system set out in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act from summer or autumn 2025. We anticipate that all current-system plans that are not subject to transitional arrangements will need to be submitted for examination under the existing 2004 Act system no later than December 2026. That, coupled with the transitional arrangements, represents a significant extension of the current system compared to previous proposals. In the transitional system, changes to the housing targets will depend on the stage of the plan. For those at the Regulation 19 stage, we will ask for the numbers to be reviewed. If you have already been through examination, the numbers will stand, but we will ask you to review your plan immediately with the new housing numbers included. Therefore, there are transitional arrangements and then further arrangements.

Housebuilding

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right and, like me, she understands this system. Since about 2015, there have been more councils that are not taking control. I believe that that is about council priorities and not about money, because not all of them have. It is up to the developers and the local planning authority to agree the appropriate funding, delivery and maintenance arrangements for these public areas. That is why, through the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill, we are taking firm action to ensure that estate management companies are more accountable to their freeholders for how their money is spent.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend the Minister will have observed that the CMA noted what it said was an increase in the number of snags of a serious kind that new-home buyers are encountering. In paragraph 5.123, it makes a recommendation about how the New Homes Quality Board could be the mechanism by which the new homes ombudsman service and a mandatory code for home buyers and housebuilders could be brought forward more rapidly. I wonder whether my noble friend, in her examination of the report, will respond positively to that recommendation?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My noble friend brings up a very important point. The Government are already committed to improving redress for new-build home buyers when things go wrong. The Building Safety Act includes provision for the new homes ombudsman scheme to become statutory and to provide dispute resolution to determine complaints by buyers of new-build homes against their developers.