Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Lansley and Lord Jamieson

Committee stage
Thursday 11th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

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

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

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

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

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

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

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Lansley and Lord Jamieson

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

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

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

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

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

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

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

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