Impact of Environmental Regulations on Development (Built Environment Committee Report)

Lord Mawson Excerpts

Friday 19th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mawson (CB)]

My Lords, I will not rehearse in this speech the points made in the committee’s report. They are now in the public domain and are clear and have been set out in this debate. I would, however, like to share a few reflections on the process that we have been through and the lessons learned. I thank the committee clerks and Kelvin, our special adviser, for the support they gave us and the production of what I thought was an excellent and timely report. I also thank the chairman of the committee for setting out the issues so clearly in the press briefing and media interviews that he took part in.

I begin by sharing my disappointment at the way the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Intergovernmental Relations, Michael Gove, dealt with the challenging questions that we sent him. They were set out clearly in writing by the clerks when we met with him on 6 February. They were questions that our committee had researched in detail. We are living at a time when there is decreased trust in politicians of all parties and in the machinery of the state and its ability to deliver anything effectively. Members of the public, let alone Peers of the Realm, are sceptical and deserve a grown-up conversation with our politicians on challenging issues and the functions of the state. We all know, and have experienced at first hand, that this machinery is not working for us in so many ways. There is a desperate need for a frank and honest conversation, in which we grapple together with the issues, admit failings and challenges and attempt together to find ways forward.

The Secretary of State arrived at our meeting with 13 civil servants in train, at great cost to the public purse—only two of whom spoke briefly. The two-hour session, I am afraid, was a great example of a clever politician who has been meddling in the systems of state for some time now but who actually told us very little. This was a real opportunity missed, and an example of what is happening on all sides of the political spectrum in our public discourse about serious issues such as the ones we are discussing today. It is a discourse that sheds very little light and, more importantly, produces very little learning.

I raised with the Secretary of State the impression that we had clearly been given in our evidence sessions of the lack of joined-up working in the siloed systems of the state for which his department was responsible. We were told time and again about the fragmentation in many of the processes of those bodies that his department was responsible for, about people not communicating effectively with each other and about the machinery’s lack of fitness for purpose, with questions over whether any real learning was going on between these various bodies dealing with these important issues.

Instead of serious engagement and grown-up discussion about the challenges—which certainly predate Michael Gove—in the systems and processes that sit below him, we were told that all was fine and dandy in the kingdom. I do not believe it for a minute, and our evidence clearly suggests otherwise. If everything is fine with the machinery below the Secretary of State’s office, why were we told, in the recent Public Accounts Committee report on levelling up, that only just over 10% of the promised funds had actually been spent and were making a difference on the ground? That report asks why the Government are unable to provide any compelling examples of what levelling-up funding has delivered so far in one of the Government’s flagship policies.

As a person with direct experience of these issues on the ground, I declare my interest. This all speaks volumes as to the challenges of this department’s machinery—top, middle and on the front line—and accords with the evidence that we heard. Our encounter with the Secretary of State was disappointing, and an opportunity for real, informed dialogue and learning was missed. These machinery issues are not a party-political matter, of course. They will equally apply to, and have to be faced by, any new and incoming Government—they are not going away any time soon.

To move on, I agree with the conclusions of our report and think that their implications are very serious. All parties are promising to solve the housing crisis, but I am afraid that this will not be possible until we are all willing to have hard, honest and grown-up conversations about the challenges that we all face with the top, middle and front line of the machinery of the state, its fitness for purpose and its ability to deliver. Trust in our democracy depends on it. There is a desperate need for innovation, new ways of working and what I call a learning-by-doing culture at all levels of the state apparatus. But what does this look like in practice?

One very interesting piece of innovation that we heard about during our evidence sessions was from the Honourable Justice Brian Preston, Chief Judge of the Land and Environment Court of New South Wales. Having done several speaking tours in Australia, I know that Australians can sometimes—given our shared history—unfairly feel a little dependent on the UK and often want to learn about our latest thinking and practice on this small island. In this case, I suspect we may have important lessons to learn from them, and rightly so. Justice Brian told us about the Land and Environment Court in New South Wales, of which he was the Chief Judge. It was established in 1979 by legislation. At that time, we were told that planning and environmental law was quite primitive and even incoherent—sound familiar? The resolution of planning and environmental disputes was dispersed between multiple institutions, not only courts and tribunals but boards and government bodies. If you had one dispute, you could go to six different courts, tribunals or boards. This led to delay, transaction costs, inconsistent decision-making and incoherence in the administration of the legislation. In New South Wales, there was a desire to rationalise this fragmentation process and bring everything into one place to create, in effect, a one-stop shop. The consequence, we were told, has been the much speedier resolution of conflicts.

There is so much more to say about the lessons that we can learn from the Australian approach but, frustratingly, we have not been given the time to have a proper discussion about it. The Secretary of State could learn a lot. This learning-by-doing environment—the 360-degree approach—may not be perfect but I suspect that it has much to teach us all. My question to the Minister is: what are we actually learning about how to resolve the tensions between environmental issues and housing, and how are we applying these lessons to practice?

Local Regeneration: Industrial Areas

Lord Mawson Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mawson (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, for initiating the debate. I know she cares a great deal about these issues and the local communities they affect, many of which are in very challenged circumstances.

I start with a telling story that encapsulates what happened in one of our former industrial areas. My mother died in Bradford, at 104 years of age, last June. She lived most of her life there, my hometown. Her father ran an ice cream shop in Oak Lane, just below the 27-acre site of what was then Lister Mills. It was originally a sweet shop, but my grandfather was so skilled at making brilliant ice cream, which he sold literally in bucketloads to thousands of workers at the mill, that the sweets and chocolates went the way of the world; he focused on what sold.

Some 150 people, mainly old Bradfordians, turned up at my mother’s 100th birthday party in 2018. She was still well networked from her armchair, through the use of her trusted telephone. The day before the party, I picked up an old brochure in Haworth, Brontë land, about the Bradford festival in 1931. Both my mother and father attended this amazing event in the city when they were at school, but they did not know each other at that time. Everyone was there—the mayor, the council, businesspeople and all the schools. My mother still remembered the excitement of it all.

In the brochure you got a real sense of the dynamic economy in Bradford at that time and a landscape defined by woollen mills and a culture of entrepreneurship. Bradford was described as the second most successful city outside London. I was told that, in 1931, Lister Mills had recently won the order for the velvet curtains for the White House—not bad. In my mother’s lifetime, this former industrial city, largely run by woollen entrepreneurs and successful businesspeople, fell to the position it holds today. What happened in one lifetime?

My colleagues and I have been working in Bradford over the last six years—I declare my interests—and I have returned to have a good look under the carpet. The first thing that strikes you is that there are still some amazing entrepreneurial people in Bradford. Pull back the carpet and you will find the Pakistani-owned cake business, in a back street, which has supplied more than 1 billion fairy cakes to Tesco. This baker then spent more than £1 million trying to restore and maintain a grade 2 listed mill complex of 400,000 square feet—impressive.

Six years ago, I was invited by the dean of Bradford Cathedral to speak at an evening event about our work in the East End of London and the Olympic legacy project, which was focused on the derelict rail and industrial lands in Stratford which I had been involved in from day one for 19 years. I described how in Bromley-by-Bow we had fostered an entrepreneurial culture against the odds in what was originally a failing group of housing estates, opposite what is now the Olympic park. The cathedral was packed. I then invited the massively impressive Bradford architect and business entrepreneur Amir Hussain to join me on stage. Amir had some really inspiring plans for some empty mills in the city, some of them still amazing industrial buildings but derelict. When I had finished my bit, Amir took us all through the list of Bradford’s former lord mayors, an amazing list of successful woollen entrepreneurs who were focused on building high-quality buildings, growing an industry that now had relationships across the world, and making theirs the best city in the country. They were practical Yorkshire people who invested in education, the arts and culture, and improved people’s lives and health. When Titus Salt, the former mayor, died, thousands of Bradfordians turned out for his funeral—again, not bad.

Amir then took us through the list of successful entrepreneurs in the city today, many of them women, many Asian and most of them young. How many of these practical, impressive people who were building and running businesses in the city were on the council today? The answer is none. Amir tells me that they were too busy running their businesses and being practical—very Yorkshire. These are serious questions. Who are we looking to if we want to rebuild our industrial sites and grapple with the broken machinery of the state? It is not the talkers; it has to be the doers. They are committed, practical people and the only ones who understand the real issues, precisely because they have done it. In my experience these people are everywhere, in plain sight, but our systems and processes often do not recognise them and have little understanding of their significance for a city. We need to find them, back them based on their track record and certainly resource them. We need to get interested in people again, not endless processes.

Those who are real doers are often slightly disruptive and, yes, difficult people who ask difficult questions. As a result, they tend not to be the people who are influencing the policies and details of national, regional or local government. As a result, we do not harness those with real skills, innovation and entrepreneurial flair. Therefore, unsurprisingly, government continues to underperform. It is all about people, not structures and policy. It is about those who act.

Amir Hussain, who I mentioned, runs a dynamic and innovative data technology company as one of several businesses in the city. He reflects on Lister Mills today, where an ambitious and incomplete apartment development has done little to stimulate regeneration. Not one new café, office or business can be attributed to the development, and the apartment values have slumped to less than half the original selling price despite many millions of pounds of government grant funding. Yet within this magnificent industrial complex reside sophisticated businesses such as Haddow, run by James Nimmo, producing textile designs for some of the biggest names in the world. Amir relates his shock at finding that there were more than 100 trendy young designers, as he called them, beavering away deep inside the old weaving sheds, in a scene reminiscent of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, but no one had noticed.

Compounding this, he told me, is the fact that our approach to data is inadvertently undermining places such as Bradford. During a collaborative meeting with the credit reference agency Experian, Amir had it analyse his own neighbourhood, just a mile away from Lister Mills. The findings were shocking. According to Experian, no one had any money, all were financially stretched and they predominantly shopped at discount stores, and therefore this area should be avoided by brands such as Nando’s, Costa, PureGym, et cetera. It was obvious to the practitioner Amir that something was very wrong, not least because there were people on his street owning brand-new Rolls-Royces. The fact that the area is 70% Pakistani Muslim had gone unnoticed. The data did not recognise that this demographic has different financial habits such as a greater use of cash, buying second and third houses, and building house extensions. In this community, the prevalence of gold shops and dessert parlours would be a far better indicator of financial capacity than credit card use.

Bradford is a success story because these people are there—I have met them, and they care about the future of their city—but I am afraid that the siloed systems and processes of the state are not fit for purpose. This city is not attracting serious, experienced and talented leadership, and when they come, they do not stay long. Who was the last Cabinet Secretary to visit Bradford who got under the carpet and took a look and an interest in these entrepreneurial people and the implementation issues they are facing as they attempt to make their businesses and their city a success? It is all about people and not process; it is about the quality of people such as Alan Bates, who cared for 20 years and got stuck in. There are people like Alan in Bradford, hiding in plain sight.

This all throws up difficult questions for all our political parties about the calibre and experience of the people they are selecting who claim to represent our cities and communities such as this one. What have many of them built? What have they done? What have they achieved in practice? Are they asking the right questions?

These questions also apply, of course, to your Lordships’ House. It has been suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, that a Peer of the realm should be chosen on “conspicuous merit”—not a bad measure, and a challenge to us all and to our political parties. Is this the benchmark we need for those who would claim to represent us at all levels?

I will finish by taking noble Lords to Fox Valley, in Stocksbridge, on the edge of Sheffield, where the paragon umbrella frame was invented. There, a local family who cared about where they lived—Mark Dransfield and his late wife, Deborah Holmes—took the risk of taking hold of a former derelict steelworks site, put their hard-earned money in, and grappled with the often very unhelpful machinery and infrastructure of the state. Hundreds of new jobs have been created there and many new businesses, new retail space and offices, and 115 new homes, with a thousand more planned. The centre is like a piece of theatre; so many community events happen there. I encourage noble Lords to go and have a look for themselves on the internet at the quality of this development. Go and visit and taste the quality of the food at Ponti’s restaurant—the first outside London. It is a great day out. My mother went, and she loved it.

Someone cared enough, someone took the long view, and someone took risks. It was Mark and Deborah. Joanna Lumley, who opened Fox Valley in 2016, said that she had never seen anything quite like it anywhere in the south of England: the attention to detail; a development that transformed a former steel town; a meeting place where work and leisure engage with high-quality public realm and architecture. Land that had laid derelict for 10 years, deepening the spiralling decline of the town, had become the catalyst for transformation—all down to two practical people who cared about where they lived.

In closing, I ask the Minister: what percentage of levelling-up funding has not actually been spent since its launch in 2020? Why might this be?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

As I have just agreed, I will come back to noble Lords with a response on this, and we can follow up in detail.

I will try to flip through a few points; I will not be able to do them justice, given that we have 45 seconds. The reality here is that there are lots of things going on. On the funding allocation through the towns fund, the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, asked how much has been spent. The towns fund, one of our flagship local growth funds, is on track to be spent by 2026, and the rates at which the projects are being completed is consistent with the delivery timelines we have already set out. We are aware that major regeneration projects take time to deliver, and it is expected that all the funds not spent at this point will be on track to be delivered.

The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, referred to the long-term plan for towns. Its key features include an allocative rather than a competitive process over a 10-year period, giving local authorities the flexibility to invest in interventions based on evolving local needs and priorities. I hope that helps with that. There were also various comments on transport. With regard to working with others in the community—the right reverend Prelate raised this—we have all sorts of answers we can give noble Lords. I will follow up in writing to many noble Lords.

I will conclude by saying that we recognise the scale of the challenge to regenerate former industrial areas. We believe wholeheartedly in their potential to thrive, not least because of the pride, spirit and resilience that these communities continue to show. I agree with all noble Lords that this is about people. We need to work hand in glove with local communities to make sure we deliver the regeneration they need. I look forward to continuing discussions and working with all noble Lords to deliver for these communities.

[Lord Mawson (CB)]

Can I just make a correction? I asked about not the towns fund but the levelling up fund. Maybe the Minister can write to us and just tell us what percentage of money has actually been spent, and what that might tell us about the machinery of the state and its ability to deliver on any of this.

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

As a Minister in the department, I want to know that answer, so I will do that.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Mawson Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 22nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mawson (CB)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Ravensdale’s Amendment 504GG, which is practical and puts some real drive into our town centres.

I want to quote a colleague of mine from the north-west of England about her town centre, the fragmentation that she feels is going on and the opportunity being missed. She said:

“When I look at the 7”


connecting levelling-up schemes,

“what I feel is missing is the coherent and comprehensive consideration of the Old Town as a ‘place’. One ‘place’. A place where people live and have their businesses, not just somewhere people stop by to solely pop into the new health and education hub for an X-ray, or the new Buddhist temple for meditation or the new youth and arts provision or the upgraded theatre to watch a play. What I fear may happen is some lovely new buildings going up in amongst some really run down streets, which will surely only be made to look even worse. I get that the money available isn’t an endless pot. I get that a number of the properties have private landlords, but what I didn’t get is the approach and ambition of aiming to elevate the place as a whole. Many of the shops are vacant and the Council must be taking empty business rates from the landlords. I wonder if there is a strategy to bring those landlords into the debate about”

reconnecting the town,

“so that the 7 schemes aren’t just 7 pieces of a bigger jigsaw where”

the real opportunity

“has been lost!”

As I say, this amendment puts real drive and economic practicality into our town centres. I work a lot across the north of England and see a lot of fragmentation. Individual little schemes will not make a difference. There need to be real practical drivers, and what my noble friend Lord Ravensdale is suggesting is possibly one of them.

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 491 in the name of my noble friend Lady Taylor of Stevenage. Currently, most government funding for affordable housing focuses on net additionality of new homes. This is much needed but it can lead to a loss of development potential and a lack of investment in the physical quality of existing communities. Without housing-specific regeneration funding streams, regeneration is virtually impossible to fund in lower-value areas, where there is little scope for cross subsidy from market scaling.

Last week, Homes England published its strategic plan, emphasising a renewed focus on regeneration. It was welcome to see this plan recognise the key role that housing associations should play in place-making, as well as the importance of sustainability in new communities. However, there is a lack of clarity about whether this would be accompanied by new regeneration funding or a flexibility around the use of AHP funds to deliver regeneration. This amendment, which also seeks clarity over the Government’s regeneration proposals, would be a step in the right direction. At present, there is a lack of strategic direction in the Government’s plans to deliver housing-led regeneration, yet regeneration is crucial if the Government are serious about delivering their economic and skills agenda while also helping to deliver quality and sustainable affordable homes across the country.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Mawson Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mawson (CB)]

My Lords, my colleagues and I have spent the last 14 months operating at the sharp end in challenging communities across the country. We can see in detail what is happening outside the Chamber. We have been taking the principles and learning from the last 36 years of practical work in challenging communities in east London, and in the Olympic Park, into challenging communities initially in the north of England, and now nationally, through the Well North programme. With local people and public and business sector partners, we have created innovation platforms in towns and cities across the country, which focus on practice at the front edge of the issues that this Queen’s Speech addresses. I declare my interests.

I welcome the focus in the Queen’s Speech on levelling up in health, innovation, skills and infrastructure, and the attempt to bring together funding streams and create a more integrated approach. This is the right direction of travel. However, some of us have been here before and the proof of the pudding will be in the detail and implementation. The UK has not always had a good track record of translating Bills into effective, transformational programmes. My colleagues and I have the grey hairs to prove it. We have tried before to bend other funding schemes developed by our Civil Service, which has often failed to grasp the practical realities at the front end.

Looking at the levelling-up fund and more broadly, I ask the Minister the following questions, in a spirit of willingness to help him and his colleagues learn from real, practical experience on the ground, gained over many years. First, are the Government going to be a learning organisation? Have they looked at what has worked well and what has not in previous regeneration programmes? Can the Minister share the insights that his department has learned from its experience of running previous programmes, when putting together the levelling-up fund and other build back better programmes? We all now need to get very interested in practitioners, not talkers and commentators.

Secondly, is there sufficient focus on joining the dots in the integration of funding streams and services, and bringing together other partners, for example from health, education, and the private and social sectors? Are we willing to learn from best practice in the place-making space? My colleagues and I are working with some of the largest businesses in the country, and the public sector, in precisely this space. We are happy to share our practical learning and point to the blockages that are preventing real change in some of our most challenged communities.

Thirdly, is there sufficient focus on change and innovation, and entrepreneurial approaches to transformation, in projects that deliver quality and excellence in our most challenged communities? Many Civil Service processes, we have noticed over the years, are great at putting old men in new clothes. Little changes: real learning and transformation rarely happen. Our inner cities are littered with previous short-term three-year government and lottery-funded programmes that came to very little because they were not built on and did not take the long view. Does government understand that pumping money into some situations can drive perverse decision-making? Are this Government serious about moving beyond business as usual? It is a sign of madness to repeat the same processes and expect different results.

Fourthly, as the taps are turned on and money is spent, is government going to be interested in the people question this time? Will we be looking at the leaders, backers and bidders and their practical track records? Will we learn from the best? Will we be concerned about the individuals who will be responsible for these programmes and plans—not just process, strategy and plan? The modern entrepreneurial world is all about people and relationships before structures; does our Civil Service understand this? Can we learn from the UK’s Covid vaccine programme—the best in the world, because key people with key skills and experience were empowered to get on with it? How can we learn that lesson?

I ask the Minister to consider all of these points when considering the large shared prosperity fund, which will replace the EU structural funds. Could he ensure that the voluntary and social enterprise sectors are not precluded from being invited to bid for these large-scale government programmes, as well as public bodies? In some parts of the country, the Government might want to ask themselves: are the public sector and local government actually up to the task? Do they have the necessary skills and insights to do transformation—or are the limitations of local government and the public sector, and the calibre of their people and their limited insights and skills, actually preventing transformation and the development of a more entrepreneurial culture?

There is a lot to play for. My colleagues and I want to support this Government at this important time, but the devil in the detail really matters.