Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Lansley and Baroness Thornhill

Report stage
Monday 27th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 90 relates to the content of the spatial development strategy and seeks to insert into the Bill the requirement that the strategy should include

“an amount or distribution of development for employment, industrial, logistic or commercial purposes, the provision of which the strategic planning authority considers to be of strategic importance”.

This is alongside the amount or distribution of housing and the amount or distribution of affordable housing. We had this debate in Committee, so I will not dwell at length on the reasons why I think it is necessary. The Committee debate demonstrated that there was widespread support among Members of the Committee for the inclusion of this in a spatial development strategy.

I want to just focus on one issue and one question to the Minister. We have agreed substantially on these issues, not least on the question of joint spatial development strategies back in the debate on the then Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. The issue, which I do not think was really raised properly in Committee, is that the spatial development strategy must be, by definition, about a broader area than local plans, and it gives us an opportunity to look in a strategic way at the relationship of travel to work areas, the sites for employment, the transport infrastructure that supports travel to work and the consequences from that of where people will be living, as well as working, which will lead into exactly the questions of the housing need and housing requirements that local plans must allow for in the future.

The Government have completely recognised the case for travel to work areas and the economic geography to be a basis for strategic planning. The English Devolution White Paper talks about strategic authorities being based on that kind of reasonable and functional economic geography, so I hope that the Minister will be able to confirm that that is exactly how strategic development strategies should be compiled.

Anybody who has put together this kind of document in the past—I had something to do with these things when we were working on the Standing Conference of East Anglian Local Authorities 20 years ago—knows that that is exactly how one goes about thinking. Even at local plan level, understanding the broader questions of what the prospects look like for employment, industry and logistics is a sound basis for determining the amount and distribution of housing.

The consequential from that is a question to the Minister. Can she tell the House that we do not need to add this to the Bill because the guidance on the spatial development strategy will be explicit and make it very clear that that is the process and that is the way in which spatial development strategies must be constructed? I beg to move.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to support the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, as we did in Committee, and in particular to talk about this broader area. My Amendment 92 is similar to that from the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, but takes it up to a greater level.

Having grappled with an attempt to do the whole of Hertfordshire, which the Minister will remember—where each district was asking, “What are we for, and what do you want us to do and to be?”—I remember that Stevenage was very much the place for incubator businesses, and an exemplar of that, and we were very much grade-A office. We recognised the need to have that across an area or we would be competing with one another, which was ridiculous.

The key point of my amendment mirrors that and complements it, because we are trying to create sustainable communities, and we all know that that means jobs. There is no point in building shedloads of houses stretching for miles when people have to get in their car even to buy a newspaper and certainly go miles in their car to commute to a job. So, we are on board with that.

I too brought my amendment before this House previously and it is supported by the Royal Institute of British Architects. The basic principle that the amendment embodies is to require development strategies to include a design vision for the whole area and, as such, it would have to include the things that were mentioned in the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. A design vision, as laid out in the amendment, is a clear articulation of what a place should be like in the future, developed with and to meet the needs of the local community. I will not repeat the reasons why this is vital, because I am sure that we all know.

The Minister knows that I have been very clear and vocal in my support for the Government’s move towards strategic planning. It has been missing from planning in any meaningful way for many years. However, I want to address their response when I first brought the amendment before the House—namely, and this will sound like a broken record, that there was no need for the amendment because the guidance already exists through the National Planning Policy Framework, the National Design Guide, and the National Model Design Code. The reason I want to press my case again is that guidance is incredibly valuable, but it is just that—guidance. I am sure that many noble Lords here today can give countless examples of where poor-quality development has come forward contrary to a development plan. To be absolutely blunt, the pressure on planning officers to grant housing schemes is great. We should not underestimate that. I am sure that we will have all seen, despite officers’ best efforts, some pretty mediocre schemes getting approval or, worse still, agreed on appeal.

The Government have quite rightly been very vocal in their support for good design. The amendment would mean that a vision for good design must be considered throughout the development process. Setting such a precedent can only be a good thing if we want to actively create and shape the places that work for people and contribute positively to their quality of life. For me and these Benches, this is non-negotiable.

Meeting housing need is an urgent task and one that we completely agree with, but doing so in a way that serves people both now and in the future—with design quality at the heart and the forefront of placemaking—is no less than we all deserve. I look forward to hearing what the Minister says, because we cannot see good design as a “nice to have”; it has to be something that we accept. It is a “must have”.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Lansley and Baroness Thornhill

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

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

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