Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I want to make two brief points. I was delighted to add my name to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, because it includes community gardens and allotments.

My first point is that I agree about allotments. Down in Cornwall, I have been involved in growing schemes, in which communities come together on common ground to produce mainly vegetables and sell the surplus to the local community. These are fantastic schemes which are very sociable and bring people together. One of our objectives in the far south-west was to allow every community to have access to a growing scheme, so that is moving on, if you like, one stage further from allotments.

My second brief point is again a reflection from the far south-west. There is somehow often an assumption that people in rural towns have easy access to green and blue spaces. If that is true anywhere, it would be in Cornwall. Believe me, I am never more surprised than when I find out that families in what we might describe as low-income, deprived areas do not get outside major town boundaries, and so areas of green space within all urban areas are incredibly important.

I hope the Minister will take note of both those observations.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

I very much support the amendments in this group. I am lucky enough to live in Eastbourne, where Mary Ann Gilbert started a branch of the allotment movement in 1830. I think we have more allotments per head than any other town, and there is still a three-year waiting list. These things need planning in, and that is why I support these amendments. You cannot rely on random happenstance or a generous builder to do it; it has to be part of the way we see and develop our towns and cities, particularly if we are going in for new towns.

This is enormously important for nature. People’s experience of nature is what happens around their homes. If there is not much nature there, they do not grow up with a love for or an interest in it. If they do not grow up with a love for or an interest in it, they end up not wanting to pay for it and are happy to trample on it if there is some supposed benefit of that for humans. Building in a real understanding of nature begins with the design of our towns. That is why these amendments are so important.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Lucas, who has just spoken, is absolutely right that starting with perhaps good intentions but firm foundations is absolutely critical to make sure that we have nature at the heart of every community as we develop the 1.5 million new homes that the Government intend to deliver before the end of this Parliament.

I particularly commend the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown. There has rightly been a reference to blue space. I actually came up with the concept in the Environmental Improvement Plan 2023. There are a few factors behind that, relevant to what other noble Lords have mentioned today. Perhaps it is about rivers; it is certainly about sustainable drainage and thinking about how the ponds in new estates can be truly made into environmental oases.

One of the big inspirations was when I visited the Canal & River Trust, where we discussed its activities in Birmingham. As we know, there are more canals in Birmingham than there are in the entirety of Venice, yet the interaction between residents there and their canals was minimal. People would often be living in pretty high blocks, without any exposure to nature. There was an opportunity to think about how we develop what you have, and about the fact that, in certain cities—Birmingham not being the best example—there is a complete desert of parks, while there are plenty of other cities that have designed parks in over the years. Instead of relying on an NPPF that can literally be changed at the stroke of a pen by a Minister from one reshuffle to the next, it is vital to make sure this is set firmly in legislative considerations.

Proposed new subsection (b) in Amendment 121, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, would make sure that green spaces are maintained. There is nothing worse than such places not being properly looked after. We see it already with areas not being watered, and so things end up dying, which is not inspiring for anybody.

The noble Lord, Lord Crisp, referred to social prescribing. I intended to speak to that in later groups, but what he said was right. As has already been pointed out eloquently, the science is there. The noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown, has set this out comprehensively. I first met the noble Baroness when she was director of science at Kew gardens, and we had some wonderful back and forth exchanges.

There are a couple of things worth considering. My noble friend Lady Fookes is right to talk about regulation, but I am worried we end up overregulating and almost missing the point—literally not seeing the wood for the trees. I intend to speak more on that in group 6.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, branched out into considering trees. It would be very helpful to have that paper from the Woodland Trust shared. Communities are about setting roots, but we do not want tree roots literally uprooting homes. That is an important factor for councils to consider. I commend the long-standing policy of Liverpool City Council, which plants lots of trees in planters underground. Then, when the trees mature, the council lifts them out of the ground, takes them off to a park and replants them there, so they are not damaging the infrastructure that has been designed to facilitate the rest of the neighbourhood. It is also vital that trees do not block light or interfere with telecommunications and the like.

Having heard this in both Houses, it is really important that the Government proactively consider how this matter comes back on Report. I know that if it does not go through this time, we will come back again when we get to the next local government Bill about community empowerment. We know from all the protests, rightly, that communities value this sort of infrastructure and want it to be developed. It is about the one thing that most communities agree on around development, which is why it is important that we get amendments appropriately tabled by the Government at the next stage.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Deputy Chairman of Committees. Just to confirm, we will be going to target this evening, so I urge brevity from everybody in making speeches, so that we can make progress and get through the business.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

I am tempted to make a 10-minute speech in response to that. If the Government decide they want to go to such a ridiculous length, it really is for the Government to—

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I apologise. I should have added that it was agreed through the usual channels, with the Front Benches, that that would be an appropriate way to arrange business.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I accept that it has been agreed by the usual channels, but this is a revising Chamber and we are supposed to be looking at a serious Bill and taking its provisions seriously. If the Government want to get through 20 groups today then it will take the time it takes. None the less, when it comes to Amendment 135G, I shall be brief.

The main reason I hear for planning processes taking longer than they should is that planning authorities take longer than they should. The Government should have the power to do something about that, and that is what my amendment seeks to achieve.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and my noble friend Lord Lucas for bringing their amendments to the attention of the Committee. They have raised a number of important points, and I look forward to hearing the Minister addressing both noble Lords’ concerns.

I turn to the amendments in my name. The purpose of Amendment 135HZG is to reduce costs and delays in the planning system by putting beyond doubt in legislation the principles that currently rely on case law. Where planning permission has already been granted and remains extant, decisions on subsequent planning applications relating to detailed matters, whether determined by an officer or a committee, should not reopen issues that were settled in the original planning permission. This matters because uncertainty in the system not only increases costs for applicants but creates unnecessary duplication of effort for planning authorities and applicants. Greater clarity will enable both sides to proceed with confidence, efficiency and speed.

Amendment 135HZH, in my name and that of noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook, is a probing amendment intended to test whether the planning system provides sufficient certainty once a permission has been granted and to explore how necessary changes prompted by new national legislation might be handled without reopening matters that have already been settled. The principle of finality is essential, particularly where significant work has already been undertaken and applications are well advanced. This amendment invites the Government to consider whether clearer statutory guidance on finality could help improve efficiency and reduce delay.

Finally, Amendment 185SE, tabled in my name, aims to provide clarity to the planning system, so that project delays are minimised where legislative changes necessitate modifications to an already approved permission—for instance, as we discussed earlier today, legislation that might require solar cells on all new homes.

In such circumstances, such modifications should be deemed to have planning permission in principle. It is vital, because projects can be significantly delayed and costs increased, and developers are required to seek fresh planning permissions simply to comply with new legislation that has come about after they receive their original planning permission. By ensuring that those modifications are covered in principle, we can safeguard progress while maintaining the integrity of the planning system.

If we are to achieve the Government’s objective of 1.5 million new homes, the planning system needs to deliver. These three amendments are guided by the same underlying principle. Clarity and certainty in planning law reduce unnecessary delay, avoid wasteful duplication and allow both applicants and authorities to focus their energies on what should be their priority, which is delivering high-quality developments of high-quality homes that support our residents and our communities.

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[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 134 with a butchered, watered down and much shorter version of my speech than the one I was going to give, so forgive me if it is not quite up to my usual standards.

This amendment seeks to reverse the decision of previous Governments to give permitted development rights to allow the conversion of non-residential properties into dwelling houses—in other words, to get back to where we were, when they would have had to apply for planning permission. The incremental changes were brought about over 10 years ago. Now, there is loads of evidence, including the Government’s own, that this is failing, and on three main grounds. Given that, in future, with more working from home, there are likely to be—and there already are—a lot more empty office blocks, we feel that this needs to be looked at fully and seriously before our town centres and business centres are hollowed out.

First, on quality, there is no doubt that many of these conversions are substandard. Indeed, in my own borough, Watford, there is a case study of a small factory that had been made into several flats with no windows. This happened with PDRs. The case was brought to government—with a body of other things, obviously—and made the previous Government include that such dwellings should have windows.

Secondly, and close to our hearts—I am looking at the noble Lord, Lord Best, here—we have lost loads of affordable housing. Had planning permission been collected, we would certainly have had more. Indeed, the LGA reckons that we have had a loss of 28,000 affordable homes. Think how many could have been housed off the temporary accommodation list had we had those homes.

Thirdly, it rides roughshod through local plans and policies, and the design, sustainability and accessibility that have been worked up with local councils and communities to build the places that they want to see.

Amendment 134 is not anti-housing; it is pro quality housing. The amendment was drawn up by the LGA, and many councils and development partners have contributed. Some 39 organisations and many individuals have signed an open letter to the Government—I heard only today that Mayor Burnham has added his name to the letter—to ask them to seriously consider rescinding PDRs. This shows the strength of opposition. In opposition, several government Members, including the Minister, had strong feelings and concerns about PDRs. My question is very simple: what has happened? I will listen carefully to the Minister’s response. I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to find that I take exactly the opposite point of view to that of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. I see permitted development rights—as in my Private Member’s Bill, and as in my amendments to this Bill—as having a large potential to contribute substantially to housing expansion. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, I shall curtail my remarks in the hope that what the Minister says will be so enlightening that I shall not need to ask her further questions.

My amendments propose a targeted set of expansions to permitted development rights to boost uptake and delivery by methods such as: removing unjustifiably onerous restrictions, including those concerning the ability to convert commercial buildings in areas of outstanding natural beauty, or the inability to extend upwards on pre-1948 buildings of no defined heritage value, or buildings postdating an arbitrary date; clarifying the wording of prior approval conditions to remove vagueness, which leads to a lack of consistency in decision-making between LPAs and more uncertainty in their application to, for example, natural light, flood risk or transport impacts; and removing the subjectivity currently allowed for within external appearance conditions for upward extensions, which are regularly used to refuse or frustrate upward extension in classes A and AA to AD and which act as a strong disincentive for the use of these permitted development rights by SME developers and housebuilders.

Instead, the local design code-based conditions in my amendments would provide certainty and consistency to decision-making, permitting the combined use and application of class MA and classes A and AA to AD, to maximise the development potential for existing buildings to deliver new homes.

Design codes are hugely important in this. Mandatory local design codes, already supported by the NPPF, are essential to make permitted development rights work at scale. They would replace subjective judgments on external appearance with rule-based certainty, define acceptable height, density, daylight and amenity standards to reduce the risk for developers, and be capable of delivery via a public/private model with some costs recovered through planning fee reforms, which could target PDR applications.

Reforms would bring consistency, reduce risk and make PDR a viable route to delivery. Local design codes would improve outcomes and boost developer confidence and certainty in the uptake and use of PDR. PDR allows for greater numbers of conversions and extensions of existing buildings to provide new housing and sustainable urban environments. This would help to reduce the demand and strain of granting housing developments in less sustainable greenfield locations.

Together, the amendments that I suggest would unlock new housing capacity in the most sustainable and accessible locations and benefit smaller building firms, while still maintaining quality and control over the urban environment.

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. With the Government’s ambition to increase the supply of social and affordable housing and the reforms to improve the capacity of the planning system, now seems the right time to reform PDR. The Government have rightly made the quality and safety of housing a priority, but conversions to PDR are not subject to the same standards compared to developments going through the full planning system.

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, in its report on the impact of extending permitted development rights on public authorities and communities, found that the quality of office-to-residential conversions was significantly worse than those which had been brought through the planning process. Other than the nationally described space standards and requirements around natural light, there are no minimum standards for these converted homes relating to safety, facilities, communal space, or connection to amenities.

It is essential that the housing that is developed is the right housing to meet local needs and make a positive impact on the lives of residents. It is necessary to make it a viable solution for addressing the housing crisis. At a minimum, conversions should meet the healthy homes principle brought forward by the Town and Country Planning Association’s Healthy Homes campaign. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond positively to these points.

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As I have already explained, we acknowledge the concerns around the quality of residential units that have been created through permitted development rights. We would therefore not want to make changes to the rights that could remove or weaken some of the protections currently set out in the rights. Overall, changes to permitted development rights come forward in secondary legislation, as I have explained, as amendments to the permitted development order, generally following on from public consultation. That ensures that the views of the public, including those who would benefit from the rights, are taken into account. Of course, we will continue to keep permitted development rights under review, and we are grateful for the views that have been put forward in this regard and the discussions that have taken place this evening.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

I am grateful for the answers that the Minister has given, and I will think hard on what she said. I certainly understand what she said about the way of dealing with these things not being through the Bill. However, I urge the Government to remember that lots of small improvements—as the Minister has pointed out in terms of the last 10 years of permitted development rights—make a difference. They nourish the small end of the builders’ market and give some balance to the domination of housebuilding by the big housebuilders. It is really important that that end of the market works well.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, I will make a quick comment. Article 4 directions are actually a very challenging process; the Secretary of State really gives you a hard time about it and you usually have to justify covering a larger area. The problem with PDRs is they are all over the place and that makes an Article 4 direction a little bit more difficult.

I would like to challenge a fundamental misconception. The Minister talked about the 113,000 homes that have already been created. The misconception is that they would not have happened anyway. I am sure some of them would not, but the majority, if they had gone through the planning process, would have had things suggested, altered and improved to pull up the standard. But, of course, it would not have happened quite as quickly.

I am going to end on a slightly tangential anecdote that shows that we really need to look at this. The people in the house next door to me have informed me that they will be erecting a 12 metre by 20 metre single-storey building in their garden directly adjacent to mine. They do not need planning permission. It is half the size of the garden and they are allowed to do that. If I want to erect a fence to cover the hideous wall of brick that I am going to be looking on instead of a beautiful garden with mature trees, I will have to apply for planning permission. Therefore, I think it is time to review the whole set-up, but particularly office to residential. I wish to withdraw my amendment.

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[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak in support of Amendment 135 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, and declare an interest in that the sponsor of her amendment, Richard Bacon, was the Member of Parliament for South Norfolk, where I represented the council for many years; it is worth putting it on record that he devoted the greater part of his parliamentary career to pursuing the importance of self-building in our nation. Self-building is not just the right thing to do because it is going to deliver more homes; it enables striving families to build a house of their dreams. Of course, they do not actually build it themselves. Self-building is not about getting all the tools; it is about procuring and possibly designing a home for you to live in for the long term—the basis of community and empowerment in that sense.

I welcome the amendment, not least because we have sleepwalked into a situation where a small number of national housebuilders have created for themselves a substantial monopoly, not just in the building of homes but in their design. Local distinctiveness and vernacular have been lost. A bungalow that has gone a bomb in Barnsley is built in Bunwell, 200 miles away, yet it is the same design language. We need distinctiveness. The logical conclusion, the spirit of what this amendment seeks to achieve, is that not only do we give those wanting to build their own home or procure their own residence the chance but local authorities can be very distinctive about making sure that we are capturing the correct need for those people who have the wherewithal to do it—not just the casual want, as was the original case and has now been tightened up.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

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

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

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

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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We recognise the opportunities offered by modular construction. That is why we and the British Standards Institution published a publicly available specification for residential properties in April this year. It offers greater clarity to the insurance and warranties market and supports delivery of quality homes. We may have some more work to do on insurance and warranties here, but I think we can get there. The industry is very keen to move this on and we are happy to work with it to do that. For all these reasons, I kindly ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister for her answer. I welcome her to 10 September.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have spoken—my noble friends Lord Fuller and Lord Lansley, and also the noble Lord, Lord Best. In response to my noble friend Lord Lansley, I am very conscious that perhaps there is a proper definition that can deal with this, so I will reflect on that and see what I can work through. He is absolutely right in saying that national development management policies are the way forward.

I inferred from what the Minister said that it is early days, and we will see where it goes. There is a group of willing people who want to get on. This is designed to make it as straightforward as possible for people to have homes. I know she supports that outcome, and I hope I can potentially work a little more with her and the noble Lord, Lord Best, in order to make that a reality. On that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

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[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 135A may perhaps look a little innocuous, but it is actually critical in considering how Part 3 of the Bill will work. By the way, I did not determine where this appeared in the Bill; that was done by the clerks.

It has arisen due to evidence given by the chief executive of Natural England, who was asked by the Environmental Audit Committee in the House of Commons to address Part 3 of the Bill. I appreciate this is before the Government backtracked and made a number of changes to try and address the significant number of concerns, which have not been fully alleviated, in regard to the potential for environmental damage.

I am very pleased to set out this suggested amendment to the planning Bill, which would, in effect, put into place what was said by the chief executive of Natural England—the body being allocated all this power not only to create but to deliver the increase in biodiversity in compensation for the development the Government want to see.

Marian Spain, when asked about these powers being given to Natural England—it will be tasked with writing, delivering, monitoring and reporting on EDPs—responded by saying that developers will be able to choose not to pay the levy if they do not have the confidence in the relevant EDP, and also that planning authorities can refuse to grant planning permission to developers if they are not convinced that the EDP would work. That is not what is in the Bill today, but the chief executive—the accounting officer—of Natural England has said to Parliament that this is what the Bill is doing. This amendment, in effect, puts that into place.

She specifically said that, in terms of not choosing to pay the levy, there is a risk that developers could not have confidence in the EDPs. This is worrying. It means that, if developers promote a new scheme through the planning system, they will not know whether or where an EDP will land or what environmental features it will cover. They do not actually know if levies will be mandatory or voluntary or how much the levies will be. They will not know whether the local authority considers an existing EDP to be ineffective. Developers would need to navigate the added very real risk that planning permission is refused because a planning authority does not trust that an EDP is being or will be delivered properly.

As a consequence of what the chief executive has said, it seems that the planning authority would need to police the progress and effectiveness of EDPs in their local authority areas. That was not in the Government’s impact assessment and may not be the intention of the Government at all. I say to the Minister that the very person who will deliver exactly what is left out in Part 3 of this Bill is saying that is the case. Frankly, if it is the case, and that is what the chief executive has told Parliament, then this will be exceptionally worse than the status quo for developers.

Developers can already access strategic solutions for nature that are competitively brought forward by a range of actors, including landowners, charities, Natural England itself and private companies. These alternative solutions will be crowded out by EDPs, and we will get to that more substantial debate next week in Part 3. At the same time, there is a risk that planning permissions will be held up because local authorities will not trust that an underfunded, unscientific, non-locally led EDP will actually be delivered.

I have greater concerns about the whole concept of Part 3. However, what I think is good is that, by my amendment, we can put back in exactly what the chief executive of Natural England says this legislation is supposed to do. That is why I am moving this amendment.

Speaking to my noble friend’s amendment on planning information, it is a very straightforward amendment, and I support my noble friend. It is basically saying, “We are looking at biodiversity, we need to know what it is, why don’t we get it all ready and we can share it with the developers, so we can know what the basic part is”. I am sure my noble friend will explain it far more eloquently than I have tried to do in those 15 seconds. With that, I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group. Amendment 135F is basically saying, “Look, we are generating a lot of quality biodiversity information within the planning system, but we are not capturing it”.

As a previous Government—this Government are too, I believe—we were committed to restoring biodiversity in this country from a very unfortunate, low level. To do that well, we need really good data. There are a number of potential sources of that data, but the great majority of the quality biodiversity data—that which can absolutely be believed because it has been collected by people who are qualified and has been properly checked and done carefully—is generated by the planning system.

But the majority of the data collected by the planning system never finds itself going anywhere else. We have a system in the country of local environment record centres, where this data should be deposited; it is not. This is what I want the Government to do. I know there are those within the Government who are working in this direction, but they are in Defra not in MHCLG, so what I would like MHCLG to do is to say, “Yes, it is important that we collect this data; we will mandate that”. When it is created as part of the planning system, it should find its way into the national data record. This is not something that would impose huge costs, because the data will almost always be in an easily accessible format. If you are applying for planning permission, and you have done a biological survey, you have to say where you found what. That is basically all that is needed for the environmental record centres. What we need to do, though, is get the data flowing.

The other side of this is—within the limitations of the Bill—my second Amendment 253A is saying that we ought to be using this data much better than we do. We create things and make decisions without accessing the best possible data that we already hold, and we ought not to do that. We ought to be making the best possible informed decisions when it comes to biodiversity; otherwise, we will do stupid things that damage the environment even further. The best possible data—the best possible decisions. That requires that, when we are taking a decision which affects the environment, we go and get the best available data. Again, the planning system is central to that. There ought not to be an application within the planning system which does not use the best data. My amendment asks that we put that right.

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The proposed amendment would take this further and require Natural England to gather information that is not specifically relevant to the environmental feature that the EDP is intended to address. In practice this would add further cost to Natural England when drafting EDPs, which would then be passed on to developers through the levy. Broadening the scope of information required from EDPs risks drawing focus away from their targeted focus on specific environmental features. With that explanation, I would kindly ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for that answer by the noble Baroness, but she did not go as far as I hoped on my first amendment. I know that there is a lot of information being gathered as a result of the biodiversity net gain process. I am comforted that the noble Baroness appears to assume this will continue, because it has been a matter of doubt, given the recent consultation. But the problem is not that it is not generated; it is generated, but then nothing happens to it. It is locked up within that particular planning application; it never gets into the national records.

What I would really like to see coming through as planning policy is that where this information is generated, it must find its way into the national database because otherwise we lose it—it is inaccessible. We do not know what was found. We cannot draw on this information to take other decisions; we are depriving ourselves. Having generated this information and people having paid for this information, it then just disappears. That cannot be the right way of doing things. We must have a planning system which contributes to the national understanding of our biodiversity. The information that we gather as part of planning surely must become part of the national biodiversity database. That is something I would really like to pursue with the noble Baroness, if she will allow me to write to her further.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply and, indeed, all noble Lords for speaking. I do not want to get into the whole Part 3 debate; we will be debating that next week. I say to my noble friend Lord Fuller that this is based on evidence given to the Environmental Audit Committee on 30 June of this year by the chief executive, Marian Spain, rather than the chairman, Tony Juniper, over a year ago. I thank my noble friend Lord Lansley for giving me confidence—it was in the right place, after all—and for providing the clarity. The key point right now is that what the Minister has said tonight contradicts what the chief executive—the accounting officer—of Natural England told Members of Parliament about the effect of the Bill. I am going to read more carefully tomorrow what the Minister has said: I am not suggesting in any way that she is misleading the House either, but I think there is a problem. Putting this amendment in has got the outcome that I would like to see but perhaps not that of the Government. With that, I withdraw the amendment.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 4th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I come back to the point I made that if an applicant applies to the Secretary of State, a planning inspector would consider the case and then advise the Minister or the Secretary of State who was taking the decision. Planning inspectors are highly qualified and highly trained. Regarding the training of Ministers, we have access to bespoke training. I have undertaken some training. Because we have to operate within the Ministerial Code and planning propriety guidance, when we are making decisions we have a different call on us from that in local planning committees.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Fuller does not need to keep the Minister on her feet. This being Committee stage, he has the right to speak as many times as he likes.

I encourage the Minister to take further the last sentiments she expressed in the context of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and the words spoken by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. It is important that we do something to increase the status of planning officials in local government. I have observed the effect that having chief scientific advisers in government departments has had on science and the way it is regarded within ministries. Over time it has had a really salutary effect. Having a chief planner, someone with that name and status, would be a good way of working back, providing status to the planning profession and making sure, as the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, said, that we get a collection of people who understand the limits of their knowledge and the advice that they are given and that the public trust them in that regard.

As a small contribution to that, I have tabled an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to try to rescue level 7 apprenticeships. If the Minister was able to have a word in the ear of her colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, to encourage her to give a positive response to that, that might solve a range of problems, not only for planning but for other professions where level 7 is an important qualification. The point that my noble friend Lord Fuller made about the importance of taking people who have entered the profession at the technician level and upskilling them to professionals is an important part of a healthy society.

Lastly, I associate the qualities of determination and optimism with the Minister, but does she really believe that we will get to Amendment 135? If she is wavering in that belief, it would be a great help to noble Lords, when the Government realise they might fall short, if they could tell us so that those of us who have amendments late in the day might find an opportunity for more time with our families.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

To take the noble Lord’s last point first, my optimism and determination is to get to Amendment 135, but we shall see. I hope I have reassured him on the point about continuing to reflect on the issues around chief planning officers. I think I already responded to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, on that, so I hope that reassures him.

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[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 346DB in my name is a probing amendment to debate what can be done to get rid of the absurd rules relating to bats—I am resisting calling them “batty”. The legislation is complex, but that does not alter the need for something to be done to get rid of the present insanity.

There are no bats in the United Kingdom of the type that is threatened with extinction, so there is no harm or danger to them; you cannot damage something that does not exist. There are some types that are close to being endangered, but there are abundant quantities of these types in other countries throughout the world. If the existing legislation were got rid of, there would be no danger to the world’s bat population. In short, legislation to preserve bats is unnecessary.

I will give two examples of the absurdities caused by the present legislation. Your Lordships will have read of the first, which my noble friend Lord Fuller referred to—the £100 million bat tunnel built during the construction of HS2. At a time of appalling government finances, it is scarcely credible to spend £100 million in this way.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend realise that we could have had 10 front doors for that price?

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

I am very grateful for the intervention. It makes the world of Alice in Wonderland look normal and sensible, and that also applies to the front door.

My second example is on a smaller scale. With the support and blessing of English Heritage, I recently purchased and pulled down a particularly ugly and inappropriate 1960s chalet-style house adjacent to Castle Rising Castle, which is a listed monument, in order to replace the horror with cottages built in the traditional local stone. This was a project for the greater good that, fingers crossed, might have just broken even. That was before the bat people got involved.

An inspection took place to check whether there was any trace of bats in the house. There was no evidence of bats, but that was not good enough for the bat people. I was made to take off the roof, tile by tile, so that a bat person could inspect each tile as it was taken off. This was despite the inspection having shown there was no trace of bats. To get to the roof in safety, the building had to be scaffolded, an absurdity for something about to be pulled down. It then took six men four weeks to remove each tile and show it to the bat person before the tile could be thrown away. Using machinery already on site would have taken one man half a day. I ask your Lordships: what sanity can there be in carrying on in this manner?

I have not even started on what the archaeologist wanted. I was made to dig down three metres, a metre below the two-metre foundations that were planned. At all stages, this had to be inspected by an archaeologist, with men and machinery having to wait for the archaeologist to find time. Your Lordships can guess what that cost.

As a country, we have managed to get to a situation where the greater good is being destroyed by the antics of minority interests, which can look at things only from their own—in many cases laudable, maybe, but very narrow—perspectives. How can any Government expect houses to be built with the enormous difficulties that builders have to contend with? I have mentioned only two. Let us start on the road to sanity by repealing all legislation relating to the preservation of the bat population. They will not disappear; they will still be around centuries after the legislation has been repealed.

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[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I contribute briefly to this debate to strongly support my noble friend on the Front Bench in her excellent amendments, both in respect of houses in multiple occupation and of hotels being converted to hostels.

I mention the specific case, in my own former constituency of Peterborough, of the Dragonfly Hotel in the west of Peterborough, which is a very pleasant residential area. Last November, without any consultation, the Home Office moved in 146—disproportionately male—asylum seekers. I raised the issue with the Home Office Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, earlier this year and he gave an undertaking that, henceforth, there would be better communication. Even the Labour Members of Parliament for the Peterborough area had cause to criticise the process of moving—decanting—those asylum seekers into the Dragonfly Hotel. The two Labour MPs, Sam Carling of North West Cambridgeshire and Andrew Pakes of Peterborough, said that

“the Dragonfly is the wrong hotel, in the wrong location and bad for Peterborough and nearby residents”.

There has been no indication of when it will cease to be used. They went on:

“We are a welcoming city but are playing more than our part already”.


The context of that is that there had been no attempt to speak to the Labour-led city council, adult social services, children’s services, the police or NHS primary care.

The context that we need to think about is that, hitherto, the planning process has been well recognised as a form of governance that works in this country. We have local development plans, we have county structure plans and—for those who really have nothing better to do with their time—we have mineral plans. I know that this is all meat and drink to my noble friend Lord Banner. The point is that it is a well-established idea that, where there is significant change in planning and development, particularly in urban development, there is a process of proper consultation between stakeholders and those affected. It might be informal discussions between planning officers and local residents or it might be a formal committee, but there is a process where people are invited to comment.

With any decision to significantly change and impact the residential amenity of a local area and people’s quality of life in that area, particularly where—as in the case of the Bell Hotel—there are a significant number of schools and young people in the area, there will be some legitimate concerns. No one is saying that all asylum seekers are criminals or are likely to be criminals but, when you bring forward very significant local change, you will cause concern.

I think a form of governance, a piece of primary legislation that obliges that information to be put in the public domain, is sensible and would prevent people listening to extreme points of view in pursuit of their particular political agenda. That is why I think that this amendment is sensible.

The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, can criticise as much as he likes. Let us hear the Liberal Democrats’ view on this and what they would do. It is very easy to criticise and put it on a focus leaflet in the opportunistic way that the Liberal Democrats do; it is much tougher, as this Government are finding and the previous Government found, to be in government, because politics is to choose and to make tough decisions—something that the Liberal Democrats are unfortunately not very used to.

My noble friend Lady Scott makes a very sensible point about accountability, transparency and clarity in the local community. If in future we are to avoid the social dislocation, violence and anger that we have seen in Epping Forest in the last few months, transparency will do that. It will allow people to have their say. It will allow their elected representatives to have an opportunity to properly represent them and ventilate their concerns, and I think that will be all to the good. The Government would be wise to do it, because they are now looking at some policies that we would have pursued. I think they are trying to tackle this issue in a sincere way. We on this side are offering these amendments as a way to ameliorate the issues because we know it is necessary so to do.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, if I may return briefly to the main subject of bats, I do not at all agree with my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising that bats are unimportant. They are absolutely part of nature. Nature in this country is hugely depleted and we need a lot more bats, but the lesson I draw from his story is that for all his huge expenditure, no bats benefited whatever. Nothing that he was made to do benefited bats in any way whatever. It is an entirely wrong-headed way of going about things. What we want is a lot more bats. If we had made my noble friend pay a few thousand pounds to make spaces for bats elsewhere in his estate, I am sure he would have done so with pleasure.

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

There is no need. The castle provides a home to endless bats.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

I think the Government recognise this both in the later parts of this Bill and indeed in what they have done with offshore wind. They recognise that offshore wind will kill a number of sea-birds and that compensation must be made for that.

What we need in this country is a lot more nature. That will take a good chunk of money. It is ridiculous to have a system that just spaffs that money away. We ought to be taking the opportunity of bats, which are pretty mobile creatures. In nature, bats live in cracks in trees. Trees fall down all the time and the bats just move home. We are worrying about bats in a completely ridiculous way. We are wasting huge sums of money and we must stop.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, Clause 51 may look innocuous, but I am concerned that it is removing the effect of democracy. National democracy is imposing its will against the will of the local people. I was reflecting on when in 2013 I was on the Bill Committee for the Growth and Infrastructure Bill, now Act. The House of Commons Committee sat for seven days on a Bill of 28 clauses. This Bill went through the Commons in seven days, with 97 clauses being considered. That is why it is important that this House takes the appropriate time. Interestingly, back then the Lords sat for only five days on the Growth and Infrastructure Bill, with the Commons having done a much more thorough job, and that is something for us to think about.

On Clause 51, I was struck by what the Minister said to me on the previous group when I had specifically singled out issues that went against the local plan. The Government’s guide to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill on GOV.UK specifically says that controversial decisions should be done by planning committee and that the best way for councillors and local communities to be involved is in the creation of the local plan—I am paraphrasing slightly. Local plans are not created every four years—sometimes it feels as if they take more than four years to create, although they should not—so I was somewhat surprised when the Minister said that planning applications not in line with the local plan are not necessarily always controversial, so we should not worry about them and allow officers to make that decision. I would love to hear some examples of planning applications that are not consistent with the local plan and have not then been controversial.

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I conclude by observing that the remaining amendments in this group, which I have hardly mentioned, are destined to ensure that digital twins will be used in every relevant context.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, it is nice to see amity break out across the Committee after the previous group. I imagine a digital twin of the House of Lords would get to Amendment 135 by 7 pm.

Digital twins offer such an ability for local councils and their officers and members, and members of the public, to really get to grips with a plan. Otherwise, you are presented with something static that is really hard to change. It is just, “Shall we push it through or shall we retreat?” With a digital twin you can adjust, look at different ways of doing it and absorb comments as they come through, at a really low cost, and arrive at a much more evolved, much better, solution at the end of it.

I urge the Government, given that digital twins are part of the industrial strategy, to use this as an example to develop the Government’s role as a partner/customer, as a way of helping new small businesses and technologies cut their teeth and get a worthwhile first contract or two out of the way, and not to stand back but be part of the development of a strong new British industry. There is an opportunity here to do that, particularly with the Government’s new town programme. I really hope they take it.

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, I endorse completely the speeches by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, and her supporters. She introduced it engagingly and comprehensively. I have therefore scribbled out most of what I was going to say. She has done the Committee a double service in that respect.

A common difficulty for those citizens who wish to examine or question a development proposal is the scarcity of information, expertise and resources they have, often when up against a large professional development company. Planning authorities have the same problem, and the risk of very expensive and protracted discussions and inquiries to get to grips with the proposed project. Some applications that I have seen seem almost designed to overcome planning authorities and public resistance through the sheer volume and number of boxes of paper that arrive, within which people have to try to find where the bodies are buried.

If such projects were obliged to produce a digital twin model, as the amendment proposes, not only would we have a more equitable process but it would also save a great deal of time, resources and money. I could say a great deal more, but I will not because we all dread the phrase, “My Lords, a lot of good points have been made” and I shall not repeat it. I genuinely shall not. I support these amendments, and I will now sit down.

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Moved by

[Lord Lucas]

113: After Clause 51, insert the following new Clause—
“Planning decisions: termite-resistant wood(1) A local planning authority may not consent to the development of new-build homes if any wood used in the construction is not termite resistant.(2) Wood is “termite resistant” if it is—(a) a species of wood that is recognised as being naturally resistant to termites such that the risk of consumption by termites is acceptably low, or(b) sufficiently treated so as to resist satisfactorily consumption by termites.(3) “New build homes” has the same meaning as in subsection 138(5) of the Building Safety Act 2022.”

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I do not know if the Minister has spent much time looking at the maps of the advance of termites across France. It is a gentle horror film, if she likes such things. They have reached Paris. There are now extensive provisions in French law for dealing with termites, for checking your house for termites before you sell it. It has become a very serious economic problem for them. As with eight-toothed bark beetle and other pests, it will doubtless make its way across the channel at some moment. It is very much headed in our direction.

Termites are not susceptible to the same pesticides as we use to control woodworm, because they function in a different way and occupy a different part of the wood. It therefore seems sensible, given that we are likely to get this thing, for us to make preparation for its arrival and not leave our entire housing stock vulnerable.

Indeed, if we were to make preparations before the termites arrive, we would have a set of people who are used to combating them and dealing with the pesticides involved, and an industry that is not building houses that are vulnerable to them. I therefore very much recommend this provision to the Government, although I appreciate that it may not actually require an amendment to the Bill. I beg to move.

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[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for tabling Amendment 113. He is right that I was not intimately acquainted with the procedure of termites in France. However, I do now know far more about the house longhorn beetle than I have ever known, and I will continue to look at this issue.

The noble Lord may have been in the Chamber on Monday when we were discussing wood being used in construction. I mentioned an office development I visited, which is just across the river from Parliament, and which makes extensive use of wood in its construction. We will see more of that; wood is a good building material and developments such as that are good uses of wood. It is therefore very important that we take these matters extremely seriously.

The noble Lord’s amendment seeks to prevent planning authorities from granting planning permission for new-build homes if timber construction products specified at planning stages are not termite resistant. Fortunately for us, termites are not endemic to the UK. Even though an infestation was recorded in the 1990s, that was subject to a successful eradication programme.

While I appreciate the noble Lord’s intention, the Building Regulations, rather than the planning system, are the appropriate way of establishing minimum legal requirements in the design of new building work. The sanitary arrangements we have in place to regulate timber imports allow us to remain vigilant. The Government take the view that mandating termite resistance in any wood used for construction materials in new-build homes would be a disproportionate measure, leading to an increased cost for developers and consumers, and adding to local planning authority burdens. However, if a threat were to emerge, guidance on timber products for new development and suitable wood treatments could be included in Approved Document A, which accompanies the Building Regulations for structure.

I hope I have given some reassurance to the noble Lord; nevertheless, I ask him to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful for that reply, even though I had hoped for something more positive. I did take out of that, given the caution that the Minister expressed about raising costs for housebuilders, that the rumours of a change to the landfill tax are probably erroneous. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 113 withdrawn.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 1st September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, the amendments in this group are all on the extension of permitted development. My Amendment 77 concerns the extension of permitted development rights for low-voltage electricity networks. It intends to help this Government achieve their ambition of a clean, affordable and secure energy system by 2030.

The amendment would enable clearly defined and modest upgrades to be treated as permitted development. That includes the upgrading of electricity lines from single to three-phase, the alteration of conduct type, modest increases in pole height where required by regulation, the temporary placement of lines to facilitate works and the reinforcement of existing apparatus such as pole-mounted transformers.

This is not a revolution; it is about pragmatism. These are modest technical improvements that would make our national grid fit for the 21st century. This is not about new infrastructure on green fields. This is needed simply because our electricity network, built decades ago, is fundamentally ill-equipped for the task required of it. I am increasingly worried about the capacity of the low-voltage grid and the investment in it. This is needed to bring electricity to our homes and to ensure that we can make the transitions we need to make—having electric vehicles and installing heat pumps to help us hit our clean-power targets.

At present, these modest network upgrades face planning processes that can take months and sometimes even years, often longer than building the relevant generation plant itself. That results in higher costs and, in some cases, stranded investment. Companies across the energy sector report the same difficulties: planning bottlenecks, slow permissions and land-acquisition rules that lag behind those of gas, water and telecoms. That is not right; there should be a level playing field for these things.

Without reform, costs for paying for clean generators to turn down because the grid cannot handle their power could soar from £2 billion a year today to £8 billion by the end of the decade. These costs are absorbed by companies and passed on to bill payers, who face higher bills. We need to get this stuff done and it needs to work. It takes a series of minor but essential upgrades and technical adjustments to equipment, not new developments, and relieves them of lengthy planning processes. Nothing in this amendment would reduce safety. Electricity safety, quality and continuity regulations remain firmly in place under Section 37 of the Electricity Act 1989, which still governs overhead powerline consents. The safeguards endure. What would change is that we would no longer require the full machinery of a planning inquiry simply to raise a pole by a few feet or to replace a conductor with a modern equivalent.

The benefits are clear. First, it would speed up bureaucracy and get things moving. Secondly, it would lower costs and avoid delays. Thirdly, it would help us achieve our climate and renewable targets. Fourthly, it would provide us with security and resilience in the system and help get electricity to our front doorsteps, where we need it. This amendment would also require consultation on further measures, ensuring that where wider reforms are proposed, the public and stakeholders are fully engaged. I am not asking for a blank cheque here; this is a carefully drafted step forward. The Government have said that this Bill is central to their plan for clean power by 2030, and we agree. This amendment is modest and seeks to help unlock the arteries to make sure that electricity can be delivered.

As I have said, this is slightly complicated because it is a shopping list of very minor improvements. But it reminds me of the approach of British Cycling, which found that a number of very small incremental differences, if implemented as a philosophy, made huge fundamental strides and gains in its ability to win and achieve its goals. The same is true with these amendments. More importantly, these are reforms and changes that DNOs and wider industry bodies are calling for, and that they say they need to achieve clean power. This is about making sure that they can do what they signed up to do to help secure more investment and get things moving.

As I am opening this group, I will circle back to the other amendments at the end. I do not want to speak to other people’s amendments before they have introduced them.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 185B, and I completely agree with the noble Earl on his amendment. I have tabled amendments on permitted development elsewhere in this Bill. It is a hugely important part of getting planning right. The Government should take some courageous decisions on what delays we do not need. What do we recognise that we have to do and how do we allow people to get on with it? Getting an efficient transmission network is something we absolutely need to do.

Moving a transmission pole may upset someone locally, but it is part of a national need. That it should be delayed, that people should take huge amounts of time on whether it should be here or there or whether an extra prop to a pole should be allowed, is just ridiculous. I am very sorry that we have allowed this to accumulate over the years. I am delighted to find the Liberal Democrats in support of reducing regulation; long may this continue. This is a really constructive way forward.

I have added the idea that we ought to allow a bit more freedom for wind generation. When I grew up, it was common to see agricultural windmills—those galvanised towers with clanking blades—all over the rural landscape. They provided power of a kind, type and price which suited the local conditions.

I remember when land wind turbines were introduced, and we all thought that they would be horrid, would desecrate the landscape and that it would be miserable, but we are used to them now—they are part of everybody’s landscape, just about. If we do not overdo it, I think that we have a reasonable basis for saying that we should experiment on allowing people to put these down for local need to generate electricity where it is needed and in a way that it is needed. It will not get done unless there is a commercial requirement for it, but we should look at freeing up the restrictions that we have placed on people putting up wind turbines and ask what is really needed here. Have we not learned enough to allow us to free this up a bit?

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 94E, but I start with Amendment 77 and simply say that I completely agree with the noble Earl, Lord Russell. We are not talking about the horrific, huge pylons; these are quite simple, and it makes much more sense to make it as straightforward as possible to up the energy locally.

I say to my noble friend Lord Lucas that there already are, I think, permitted development rights for turbines to the level that he suggests. I suggest that the permitted development right is solely for a single turbine, and I note that his amendment refers to “turbines”. I would not want this to be a back door to having significant numbers of wind farms on a variety of land, if he were to press this any further.

The reason my amendment is in this group is that also has to do with permitted development rights, regarding solar. We will debate solar today under other parts of this legislation, but this amendment seeks to try to get permitted development rights for solar on reservoirs. There are certain reservoirs, some very close to London, where sometimes a bit of sailing happens but, by and large, they sit there empty. Important as these reservoirs are for the water supply that we need, this would be quite a straightforward way of allowing for a modest amount of solar extension, which may only be that which is needed for the local facility, or perhaps a little further. I would not suggest that any would have to have an automatic connection to the grid, because that would probably be exceptionally expensive. The point is that, if we are going to increase the amount of renewable energy, why not allow reservoir owners to put this sort of solar development somewhere we are not then displacing agricultural land and where it does not require the huge extensions or connections that we see today right across agricultural land all over the country?

Floating solar is apparently seen as a nascent technology in the solar road map, so has not really been included in this Bill. I am conscious that we have read in the press this summer that there might be a second planning Bill, but I suggest to the Government that they should carpe diem. Why do we not get on and get this sort of permitted development right? Elsewhere in the Bill, I have suggested an easier way to try to include reservoirs and large ponds. In fact, the Secretary of State for Defra, Steve Reed, has been very specific in some of the open meetings that he has had that it needs to be easier for farmers to be able to access reservoirs and have them on their land. From my perspective, this could be a double win.

The other aspect that people may not be aware of with regard to the benefit of floating solar on reservoirs is that it could potentially help boost water security. One of the things with reservoirs is that it is not just about usage and them being drained ineffectively; it is also about evaporation levels, which means that we start to see a significant reduction in how much water is available. By simply having these solar panels, we can have a physical barrier between the water and the sun.

It is suggested that it is possible that such development could boost biodiversity on reservoir sites. Any opportunity that we can take, in a mutually beneficial way, to boost nature as well as energy resilience is something that I would hope that the Government could consider.

I understand that the UK is home to Europe’s largest floating solar farm, on the QEII reservoir, and I know there has been a bit of on and off, literally, about how effective it has been. Nevertheless, it is important that we consider all opportunities to make sure, at very limited or ideally no cost to the bill payer, that we maximise the amount of energy that is directly available to us.

On energy security rolling forward, trying to get more homegrown electricity is key. That is why I hope the Government will look at this carefully and consider the benefits of permitted development rights for floating solar on our reservoirs.

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[Earl Russell (LD)]

In this group on the Forestry Commission’s actions and duties, I will speak briefly to my Amendment 88 and in support of Amendment 93, which was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Young. I support pretty much all of the amendments in this group. This has been an interesting conversation on not only the role and development of the Forestry Commission but its relationship with hosting energy, including what safeguards and protections need to happen as we go down that road and what our forests will look like in the future under climate change.

My amendment is designed to put in place some safeguards on the new powers granted to the appropriate forestry authorities for energy generation, transmission and storage on public forestry land. At the heart of all this is a balance between what we do to hit our climate and nature change duties and what we must do not to further damage our ecology and biodiversity. It is fine to make use of our forests for these things, but it must not have detrimental impacts. That is what I have tried to balance in my amendment.

The commission gains unprecedented powers to host and sell energy from renewable installations on land under its management. Yet, when I looked at Clause 28, there were no clear legal protections for most precious habitats. My worry is that, without such safeguards, we will see renewable energy infrastructure sited in ways that harm our ancient woodlands, our carbon rich peatlands and other priority habitats that the Government have a duty to protect, particularly under our 30 by 30 biodiversity targets.

I am looking for a reasonable balance between timber production and nature conservation. That reasonable balance is in the Bill, but what does it mean? It is not purely defined in the Bill, which was also a worry for me. In response to that, my amendment tries to take a pragmatic way forward. I note the issue raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Young and Lady Bennett, about the percentages. My amendment says that no more than 2% of all Forestry Commission land and no more than 5% of any individual site could be given to energy storage and development. I will go away and look at that. At the moment, there is no cap on that at all. Noble Lords may not agree with my percentages but putting a percentage in the amendment is a whole lot better than having no percentages in there at all; however, I will go away and look at whether there is another way in which that might be done.

This issue is particularly acute in our national parks and where our national parks and Forestry Commission land co-exist; in the New Forest, that is 47%, while, in Northumberland, it is 15%. These are treasured landscapes. Energy development must be proportionate, consistent with statutory park purposes, subject to democratic oversight, not impacting on leisure facilities and making sure that our national parks authorities have some say in and control over these things. These are important matters.

My amendment does not seek to reject the role of using Forestry Commission land to help with our energy; it just seeks to put some safeguards on that. I will go away and consider my amendment. This debate has been useful for me, and I will reflect on this, but there need to be more safeguards in the Bill—of that I am still certain. I would be very happy to work with the Minister between now and Report to see whether there are ways in which we could do that together; that would be welcome.

This has already been discussed in detail but, turning briefly to Amendment 93, I have supported the Private Member’s Bill brought forward by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, at every stage of its passage through the House. It is absolutely essential that we update our climate change legislation. In the last debate on his Bill, I said that it was the equivalent to the Government being the general and knowing what the military strategy was but failing to tell any of their own troops. The Government need to work with all these public bodies. These things are so pressing and so complicated. The Government are holding on to all this stuff and not passing the orders down and empowering others, including the public bodies. The Forestry Commission owns 5% of all public land. It needs a duty to enhance and meet our climate change and biodiversity targets; it is silly that it does not have that.

I am sorry. I am a little buoyed up having come through the Crown Estate Bill and the Great British Energy Bill, where we managed to work with Ministers and get such provisions added to the Bills. It is on my agenda to do that in this Bill; that makes sense. I would like to work with the Minister, but it is a minimum for me that a similar amendment to the ones in those Bills is added to this Bill. If the Government want to make use of forestry land for energy generation, that is fine, but with that comes some responsibilities; those responsibilities include that this duty should added.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I very much approve of what the Government are doing in this clause. I think they should go a bit further. I want to illustrate this in the context of the challenges faced by southern broadleaved woodlands, which existed for many centuries as places of industry. People made things there; a lot of products came out of it. The whole biodiversity of that ecosystem comes out of a continuous pattern of use. It is interesting to see, for instance with NEP, how little biodiversity is left in the woodland when the woodland ceases to be of value. All the biodiversity there, which is considerable, has moved outside. Our woodland biodiversity is important.

The Government should be organising themselves, and the Forestry Commission, so that we can see a restoration of a commercial purpose to the southern broadleaved woodlands, particularly in England. We cannot at the moment rely on forestry. All the species that we used to grow in profusion have no big current use. Our neighbouring forest in Eastbourne was planted to beech 100 years ago. When they are felling it now, 100 year-old trees are going to firewood. There is no market now for really high-quality beech.

In the small wood that I own, oak is the main crop. We have acute oak decline coming in now. You are asked to wait 100 years for oak. If it is all going to rot away before then, there is no outlet. We really need a system that can take general wood output—branches, brash, thinnings, uneconomic trees—and turn it into something useful. The outlet available at the moment is energy.

The Forestry Commission is hugely important in this as it has a breadth of organisation and understanding, whereas the ownership of woodland tends to be extremely fragmented in the south. It can bring a lot in motivating, organising, inspiring and controlling when it comes to looking after biodiversity principles.

I am very pleased to see the direction in which the Government are moving here. My understanding is that this clause is written in a way that allows the Forestry Commission to work with partners in achieving its objectives; it does not have to do everything itself. However, I urge the Government to make one change to this: not just to look at renewable power but to look at renewable feedstocks for industry.

If we are to replace oil as the feedstock for our chemical industry, we need to go after every available source of concentrated carbon, and woods produce quite a lot of that. In looking at the powers that Forestry Commission has under the Bill—there are already young British companies using wood products to produce jet fuel and similar things—we need to add that extra aspect: not just renewable energy, but renewable feedstocks for industry.

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, the amendments in this group speak to the vital role of our nation’s forests in delivering both environmental and societal benefits. As I begin, I refer the Committee to my registered interests, in particular as a forest owner and as a developer of new forestry and woodlands.

Turning first to Amendment 87, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, I recognise its thoughtful intent. It seeks to ensure that public forestry resources are not disproportionately used to supply large-scale biomass operations. We are sympathetic to the amendment’s aims and to many of the comments made in this short debate. The responsible management of public woodland must prioritise environmental protection and long-term sustainability, but the picture is complex. Biomass plays a role in our renewable energy mix, and there may be cases, such as thinning or disease control, where repurposing woodland material is practical and sustainable.

This is ultimately a question of balance. I ask the Minister to outline how existing safeguards ensure that public forestry will not be placed under undue pressure from commercial biomass demand. I also note, as my noble friend Lord Lucas pointed out, that the overwhelming use of felled broadleaves is currently for home heating. Without the wood-burning market, mature forestry economics are undermined in these situations. It would be a shame to lose that incentive for managing our native broadleaf plantations and natural woodland.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 25th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, whose wisdom and company I enjoyed during my time on the environment committee. I am a supporter of the Bill, by and large. I am delighted to see that the policy is shifting towards “We want more bats” and away from “No bat must be inconvenienced”, but as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said, bats are not the problem when it comes to planning. As Members of an organisation that can spend enough money to build 50 houses on a pair of front doors that do not work, we should realise that.

I hope to use Committee to encourage the Government to take some of their ideas further. There is obvious scope for allowing trusted partners to work alongside the Government to achieve what they are hoping to do with environmental delivery plans. Many farmers’ groups are in a position to work on that sort of initiative. To rule them out, as the Bill does currently, is missing an opportunity.

What the Government are doing in throwing into doubt the whole structure of biodiversity net gain is a mistake. In biodiversity net gain, people are asked to commit for 30 years. It was a policy which evolved with support across the House, and now this Government, after merely 30 months of the policy, are throwing everything into doubt. Those people who had got themselves organised to be part of that system are wondering whether they made a huge mistake, and by the time the Government get around to sorting their ideas out, those people will have lost confidence. The Government really need to understand that having trusted partners in the private sector to deliver what they want is a plus, and they need to put themselves into a position where those partners can believe that the Government—and any Government that follow—will support them through the long-term commitments which this Government and the previous Government were expecting to be made.

I hope to persuade the Government to accelerate their work on biodiversity data. We have a very rich and capable set of players in this country, with the local environment record centres and a lot of amateur effort. But a lot of biodiversity data that is created through the planning system is not captured. A lot of planning applications go through without using the data we have. We need a better structure that is better thought through. I know the Government are working on those things internally. I hope to see that brought forward into this Bill, rather than left for some future occasion.

I really hope I will be able to persuade the Government to take an interest in those measures which would allow more use to be made of the settlements we already have. I had a Private Member’s Bill on permitted development rights, but we should also look at measures like land readjustment schemes, the London system of public transport accessibility zones, and the use of design codes to make it easy for developers to know what will be permitted, rather than leaving the whole question of design to be an uncertainty and a rather individual and personal decision at the end of things.

We should pick up on an aspect of the Government’s industrial strategy, where in various areas they are supporting the use of digital twins. There is a great deal that could be done in planning, which does not appear to be specifically part of the industrial strategy, to reduce costs, enable collaboration and enable imagination when it comes to what the layout of a new town should be and look like. The AI-assisted capability that is embedded in some of the British products that underlie this are tools that the Government should be seeking to support.

I will try to persuade them to make livestock markets and abattoirs critical national infrastructure. We need to sort things out: we are causing a great deal of cruelty to animals by not renewing our structure. Animals are having to travel very long distances to their deaths, and we can do better than that.

I will recommend a duty of candour for planning officers to go with Clause 50, so that they feel absolutely confident in telling members exactly what is, rather than feeling that they can in some way be criticised, and therefore giving them a duty to support their views.

I will urge the Government to redefine what a newspaper is. It was set out in 1881. Things have moved on, and if we are to have Clause 98 with duties to put notices in newspapers, it ought to recognise the modern world.

Echoing the national security strategy and our need to fight on home soil, I will draw the Government’s attention to the fact that we may not have termites here now but look at what is happening in France.

Birmingham City Council

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 1st April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for his question. Like many noble Lords in this House, he has direct experience of leading a council, so he has felt the pain of funding cuts, as have all of us who have been in that position. We have made some changes to the local government funding formula this year to make sure that funding goes where it is needed most, instead of following a historical pattern of allocations. We will make further changes to that. As noble Lords will be aware, we are going into the spending review process now, which is why we could issue only one-year settlements, but we will provide multiyear funding settlements, which will make a difference to the stability for local government funding and make sure that the greater quantum of funding goes to the areas where it is most needed, of which Birmingham is certainly one.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to hear what the Minister said about restoring audit, because the best value commissioners’ report is an astonishing catalogue of failures in governance and culture—deep rooted, long term and all pervasive. What systems does the Minister envisage to allow the new unitaries that the Government are creating to start out with strong cultures and governance, rather than fall into the despairing place that Birmingham finds itself?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I described my commitment to audit in an answer to an earlier question. Audit is part of that, and so is the collaboration that local government is now pulling together to drive the route towards these new unitary authorities, which will serve them well as they go through the process. We absolutely have to make sure that audit function is in place and sound, because that is the public’s reassurance that their council is not only financially stable but making good use of public money. That is why it should be considered as part of the English devolution Bill.

Plan for Neighbourhoods

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, I have already spoken about our three main objectives and what we want to do, but it is ultimately up to the local people to decide what they want to do. It is not mutually exclusive for local people to decide areas of improvement in their local communities which are not in our missions. The whole idea is to drive growth, to have safer streets and to have neighbourhoods that people take pride in. That is the focus of this announcement: to ensure that people can feel pride in their area but can also take control and decide for their future.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I like the idea of the structure very much, as I did with the previous Government, but how do this Government propose that local people will hold the boards accountable for the choices that the boards make? As the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said, there is great potential for all the money to disappear into the local swimming pool because that is what the councillor on the board likes. Is a structure being produced that will allow local people to influence the board’s decisions?

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

To reiterate a point I have made before, local authorities are part of the whole process. They will work with central government and my department in particular to have regular, continuous monitoring of how the work is going. That is how we will communicate, but local authorities are heading part of this and they are signing off the board.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, I cannot pre-empt what local authorities and local neighbourhoods will want to do in their particular areas. The whole idea behind the exercise is to give more power to local people. However, on the point that the noble Baroness is alluding to, there will be a plan called the regeneration plan, which will be submitted to central government. More guidance and a framework will come out on this. The regeneration plan will set out the board’s vision for the next decade, alongside a more detailed investment plan for the first four years of the programme. The submission window for regeneration plans will open in spring 2025 and close in winter 2025. Further details as to the content, form and submission timetable for the plans will be set out in the forthcoming guidance.

We know that places have worked hard to engage their communities and develop their long-term plans for the previous Administration’s long-term plan for towns. That progress is not for nothing and should not be undone, nor should places undo their governance arrangements. Communities should feel empowered to build and adapt their existing plans. Our reforms seek to build on and improve the previous programme with a new set of strategic objectives aligned to this Government’s plan to kick-start growth to be delivered by a broader range of policy interventions.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, in my area, Eastbourne, the process of going unitary will mean that Eastbourne Borough Council is abolished, and we currently have no town council. Which council will be involved with our neighbourhood fund? Will it be the East Sussex unitary council or some new council created in place of Eastbourne Borough Council?

Permitted Development Rights (Extension) Bill [HL]

Lord Lucas Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 7th February 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lucas]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are bringing forward some excellent proposals to get us more housing, which we really need. I am in favour of a focus on new estates, new towns and building out near railway stations, and I very much hope that we will see those ambitions realised soon. However, today I will focus on the promotion of gentle density, connectivity and community within existing towns as a way of contributing to dealing with the housing shortage.

A good deal of housing in existing settlements is low density and in developments that were put together in the belief that everyone would go everywhere by car, because the car was the future. There is a lot to gain in our current world from allowing such settlements to become denser.

Shops, schools, doctor’s surgeries, pubs and community centres all require a minimum number of users to flourish. If those users are within a small enough range, those facilities can be accessed on foot or by public transport. If they are more spread out, you get a community which is entirely dependent on the car, which is quite isolating: you go from one place to another without interacting in between; it is not a great builder of communities. Also, if we are densifying a town, we are generally talking about employing small builders who get cut out of the bigger developments by the well-organised big housebuilders. However, if you are working within a town in complicated little ways, that space is ideally suited to helping our smaller building firms flourish.

It is natural for people living in a house to want to enlarge it. People want to stay in an area for the jobs, schools, family and community to which they are connected. They could move, but then they would have stamp duty and moving costs—always things to want to avoid—and, anyway, there may not be a house available to which they would like to move. Extending is good for us all, because if we all extend our houses, we will need to build fewer houses. Adding a bedroom so an adult child can stay at home rather than sharing a two-bedroom flat, reduces the need for new housing by half a house. Extending can also help young people to get on the housing ladder, because they can live at home for longer and save for a deposit. That is especially important in London and the south-east, but increasingly important everywhere. If people can afford to make their house larger and would find that a desirable thing to do, why would we prefer them to go on an expensive, long-haul holiday abroad, rather than employing people here and creating an asset for themselves and for the nation as a whole?

How do we do this? This Bill takes a shy at that. Given that we are expecting a government planning Bill, I will not try to focus on perfection or on improving what is already in my Bill. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has raised some very cogent objections to it, but since I shall not push to take my Bill any further, I hope rather that these points will help inform the Government’s own deliberations as to what to put in their Bill.

The Bill seeks to make best and optimal use of land, and to minimise the circumstances in which a capricious or arbitrary refusal of densification can be made. It builds on existing planning arrangements, expanding the presumption in favour. However, it intends to have safeguards to prevent the destruction of the street scene where there are design codes or where change would create visual disharmony; to avoid overdevelopment; and to respect conservation imperatives. There will be rules to be obeyed under this Bill, but not rules that are silly or hard to comply with; I want to see us build quality and beauty, but to get on and build.

The Bill allows for the preservation of private rights, but also provides help in navigating them. If we are to rely on people doing more of their own development, we must help them navigate this tortuous area of competing private rights and property, and it would be an easy thing for a well set-up planning authority to be helpful with.

I have also suggested that we should put our foot forward more in building in flood zones. A lot of our existing communities are flood liable, but if we are to allow people to expand their houses, we can reasonably say that they must make them flood-proof, so that we get some of our flood prevention done as a result of allowing people to extend.

Beyond that, I would like to see it made much easier for people to make use of roof spaces; to have full-height extensions to the side and rear to make a house larger; to be able to put a single-storey extension in the garden; to put extra floors on bungalows; and, within the centres of towns, to go up to four storeys without question.

Good communities on the continent, in places such as Holland and Belgium, are dense, but it is a very comfortable, community-orientated, good-to-live-in density. That is where I would like to see us being allowed to head. In addition, I propose that we should make it easier for householders to make their own contributions towards net zero. It should be easier to put in heat pumps and solar heating or electricity. We know that we want to do it. It is an efficient process when it is done at the individual house level, because you connect the source of power and its user intimately, without needing a lot of infrastructure beyond that.

This is not an easy area to get right. There are many contending issues. I very much look forward to the Government’s planning Bill and hope that they will prove more adventurous and better at drafting than I have been. I hope to see a system that will give real impetus to the process of densification. I would like to see planning authorities with clarity of rules, speed of action and maybe some cumulative economic test. Yes, there are lots of conditions that planning authorities may impose but if, together, their costs make a change uneconomic, it has gone too far. The planning authority must choose what it wants to add as a requirement. It cannot just go overboard and throw everything in. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to all who have spoken, in particular my noble friend Lady Coffey. It is nice to have some support from somewhere other than the Front Benches. She raised some important matters around what kind of flooding we have to deal with, adaptation for disability and, indeed, the importance of small reservoirs. Letting people do individual things, to make individual benefits to contribute to the whole, is really the substance of this Bill.

Let us not have to do everything in big lumps. Let us solve the problem by everyone doing their bit. Allowing more people to do their bit is the burden of what I have put forward in this Bill. I accept the criticism from the Government that it would be better done through secondary legislation and through being consulted on. I very much hope that this is a direction that the Government will feel inclined to take in due course, and I very much look forward to the Government’s Bills when they come through.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

House adjourned at 1.53 pm.

Devon and Torbay Combined County Authority Regulations 2024

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I remind the Committee of my relevant interests as a councillor on Kirklees Council in West Yorkshire and as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

These four statutory instruments are politically and historically interesting. First, they recreate in whole or in part the historic counties of Devon, Lancashire, Lincolnshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire. That is a positive change. It is another reversal of Thatcherite policy, which, in this instance, abolished county councils. Strategic planning and provision of such key local services as public transport, housing and economic development can be much better made across a larger geography. That change is therefore welcome. However, I am not letting the Minister off the hook that easily. I have a number of questions applicable to each of the relevant instruments.

First, on governance, can the Minister confirm that meetings of either the mayoral or the combined county authorities will be held in public and that scrutiny committees are a requirement, with powers for pre-decision scrutiny and to call any decision that is challenged under the relevant procedural rules?

The Devon and Torbay Combined County Authority combines two very unequal—in both population and geography—partners. Can the Minister say whether that disparity has been considered and whether any issues have been raised in the wider county on this point in the consultation, the details of which I obviously have not seen? I ask this because there will be inequality of representation on the authority from these very unequal parts, and I wonder whether that will result in a bit of friction when it comes to making difficult decisions.

I note at this point that, because of the efforts made during the passage of the then levelling-up Bill by the Minister, her team and me, district councils will have representation on the combined authorities by law. That was a very important change to the Bill.

I move on to the Hull and East Riding Mayoral Combined Authority. There will be a mayor from May this year; we will see how that pans out. I recognise the appeal to the Government of having a single person elected to lead a combined authority. However, I and my colleagues are not convinced that, from the residents’ standpoint, this is a positive move. Mayors will be tolerated—this is my experience; I live in a mayoral authority—while there is no mayoral precept and while they are basically determining the details of delegated powers and funding from government. However, when either of those things changes—if there is a mayoral precept of a considerable amount or when there are difficult decisions to be made on funding allocation, which I anticipate will come with bus franchising—I anticipate greater concern from residents that their voice is not being heard.

For instance, in the Hull and East Riding Mayoral Combined Authority area, which I know better, I can easily see that, with the rural parts of East Riding and the very urban area of Hull City Council, it could be difficult to make decisions on allocating funding under the bus franchising legislation, which I hope will be passed. Trouble is coming down the track, I think.

The Greater Lincolnshire Combined County Authority recreates the historic county of Lincolnshire, which is positive. It combines the seven district councils of the current county council, plus the two unitaries of North Lincs and North East Lincs. The issue I want to raise concerns transport funding. In this statutory instrument, the constituent authorities remain the highways authorities but central funding goes directly to the mayor, who then has the responsibility of cascading the funding to each of the three existing highways authorities. Can the Minister describe how fair allocation can be assured and whether using this mechanism will add to bureaucracy by adding yet another layer of governance?

The Lancashire Combined County Authority will, as we know, consist of the existing county council, the unitaries of Blackpool and Blackburn and Darwen, plus the 12 existing district councils of the current county council. We have had the devolution White Paper. If its proposals are accepted—I hope that there will be some challenge to them—this will result in the demise of district councils. For Lancashire and Lincolnshire, this would result in another wholesale local government reorganisation within a short period, with the added confusion that accompanies such structural change. Those of us who are involved understand what might happen; residents will not. Have the Government considered these two separate reorganisations and how they will be managed without causing confusion and additional costs?

As I said at the outset, this is the right move for strategic decision-making. However, I look forward to the answers to my queries from the Minister.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the Minister’s exposition of these SIs. I completely understand why we are moving in this direction: greater efficiency and effectiveness. I very much hope that the Government can, as this process moves on, increase the level of effective devolution and perhaps even give some real independence over revenue to these authorities so that they can develop their full potential.

In addition, when we reach Committee on the hereditary Peers Bill, I will propose that, rather than hereditary Peers being the eligible candidates in by-elections, it should be people nominated by these new authorities and their mayors. We can use the existing mechanisms that we have to start to introduce a measure of regional representation into the House. I hope that the Government will have their imaginative hat on when we come to that. The mechanism is in place; let us use it to move in a direction that many of us would like to go in and to take at least a small step.

I am a resident of East Sussex, which is one of the candidates for the next round of this measure. I note that the local proposals involve a mayor for the whole of Sussex, thereby recreating not the original county council but the original kingdom of Sussex—perhaps we might have a prince rather than a mayor. What concerns me most is how the towns and communities in these new unitaries will come to cherish, assert and grow their own identities. I very much hope that I can persuade the Minister to circulate widely to all the councils that are candidates for this, as well as their constituent parts, examples of how communities flourish in unitaries, including what structures and relationships make that happen well.

The process of transition from “a county plus districts” to a unitary system will be hugely time-absorbing for the councils involved. They will have no space in their heads to do anything other than make that work well. The constituent communities underneath that need to understand how to play their part and how best to organise themselves so that they have a real role to play in what comes afterwards.

Looking in particular at East Sussex, along the seaside, we have Rye, Hastings, St Leonards, Bexhill, Pevensey, Eastbourne, Seaford and Newhaven. They are all immensely different places. Each has its own identity and its own way of doing things. In the interior, you have towns such as Lewes, which are really different, as well as ordinary country towns such as Uckfield and Heathfield. There is a huge variety of different communities within what will be one unitary: different histories, different spirits.

Homes: Existing Communities

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, when I listened to the Government’s announcement this morning, I was hoping to hear much more courage than I did. As my noble friend Lord Wolfson of Aspley Guise points out, courage and change are what is needed here. We know that the current situation will not do. The longer it persists, the more damage it does. Reversing out of it is a big thing: it will have big consequences, and it will need some big thinking to do it right. I really hope that this Government discover their mojo on that.

As my noble friend said, artificial scarcity over a long period has created house prices that are out of people’s reach. It is not resulting in good patterns of community building. It is not resulting in beautiful buildings. All sorts of things are going wrong. We need a different way of facing. I am attracted by what the noble Lord, Lord Best, suggested as one of the ways out of this: development corporations could help take existing communities onwards and also build new towns.

We have different requirements of towns these days. We want them to support a really good public transport network; we do not want them to be car dependent. A lot of that comes into how we want communities to evolve. Where we have villages, we want them to have sufficient houses so that they can support the local services they need. However, when it comes to towns, they need to be big enough too: they need to support good medical facilities, good sixth forms and other services. There are lots of things that should go into deciding what we want our communities to look like; we then need to find a way of expressing that, through the planning system, in what gets done.

I think that the concept of the green belt has had its day. What we want is communities with embedded green space so that people find green space and nature on their doorstep, something that is easy to access and part of their everyday life. What we want outside towns is spaces that we dedicate to nature, places that are preserved but are accessible by a bus route so that people can get out there to see something and enjoy it, but which are frozen so that we can look after nature in them and are part of the funding system to do with where people live so that they are not cast out on their own, dependent for ever on handouts from Defra or whoever, and are part of the integral economy of the urban centres. We need to rethink the concept of green space completely.

We also need to look at the regulations that we have imposed on existing communities. We can afford to let these places get denser. By using permitted development rights allow people to extend the houses they have, use the spaces between houses and add another floor or two. A bit of variety never spoiled a streetscape unless it was designed like the Royal Crescent in Bath which you might want to preserve. Most places can take variety. I have a Private Member’s Bill on this subject coming in the new year, and I very much hope the Government will support it. Beyond anything else, I am with my noble friend Lord Godson: we want beauty because living among beauty is one of the most healthful, well-being inducing things that you can offer to people and communities.