Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

I remind the Committee that I am chair of the Cornwall & Isles of Scilly Local Nature Partnership, but I am also a director of Wessex Development and Investments Limited, a development company, so I am on both sides of planning and nature issues.

This is a probing amendment but quite a specific one. It comes on to the area of planning enforcement. Generally, the planning system is meant to be a permissive one; unless there is good reason to stop development, it should happen. Paragraph 60 of the National Planning Policy Framework states that the planning system is discretionary and proportionate, but it also makes the point that enforcement of the planning system is there to maintain public confidence. It is that area that I want to concentrate on this evening.

We will all know of residents who are concerned that people move ahead with developments that are wrong, without planning permission. They feel that those individuals are cheating the system and moving ahead of other people who are trying to go through a system legally and properly. That can cause a great deal of discontent. At the moment, planning enforcement is not a duty of local authorities. When I have talked about this area with local authorities, they have made it very clear that they are not funded to enforce, so it is not an area always given a great deal of emphasis because there is no return.

One area that I came across with one of my own principal local authorities is that, with regard to environmental conditions on planning, the track record was that 40% of those environmental conditions were never actually implemented over quite a long period of time. That is why, in this amendment, I have stressed environmental, climate and nature conditions on planning that are widely ignored in development and, because they are relatively minor on individual cases, are not enforced. However, on a broader scale, because that is the case, they are a major threat to biodiversity and net gain in nature and all the things that we need to do to more forward the environment and climate agenda. As we all know, with the built environment, if we do not get it right to begin with then that is a problem for the length and total age of the building.

I am trying to find out from the Government how we get out of this issue. On the whole, local authorities do not want to enforce. I am clear that, on other things, such as minor infringements that are not to do with nature, we do not want a system that looks like a police state, but we have the balance wrong at the moment, particularly around planning conditions that seem minor but are important on a macro scale. That is my question for the Minister: how do we get out of this? I believe that there is a way forward on this if we can reflect the costs on people who do not comply with planning, if those particular issues then have to be enforced. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

Before we proceed, the Government Whip will make a brief statement about the progress of business.

[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.