Building Safety Act 2022 (Consequential Amendments etc.) Regulations 2023

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Tuesday 20th June 2023 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

My Lords, these regulations will make technical but important changes to the language used in existing legislation, bringing it into line with the new terminology and processes introduced by the Building Safety Act 2022.

I will start by providing some context for these regulations. After the Grenfell Tower tragedy, the Government recognised the need for an overhaul of our building safety regime. In 2017 we appointed Dame Judith Hackitt to conduct an expert review of the current regime. Her review identified the need for significant cultural and regulatory change, including recommendations focused on the building control process.

Part of the Government’s response to these building control recommendations included the introduction of provisions in Section 33 of the Building Safety Act that repeal Section 16 of the Building Act 1984. The Government consulted on these provisions, and they were subject to pre-legislative scrutiny ahead of formal consideration of the Building Safety Act.

Section 16 made provision for the deposit of plans with local authorities before starting building work, as well as the passing or rejection of the plans. The information provided to building control was not always consistent, nor always sufficiently detailed for the work to be carried out.

Section 33 of the Building Safety Act, which has yet to be enacted, repeals Section 16 and provides instead for a new system of applications for building control approval. For higher-risk buildings, this means a more stringent system, with the building safety regulator the sole building control body. Applicants cannot proceed with work without explicit approval from the building safety regulator.

For non-higher-risk buildings, there is no significant change from the existing procedure. Local authorities and approved inspectors will remain responsible for supervising this work, and work can begin before approval is granted. Applicants do so at risk of having to uncover or change work and could face enforcement action. In addition, provisions in the Building Safety Act largely transfer procedures for appeals under the Building Act from the magistrates’ court to the specialist First-tier Tribunal.

The purpose of these regulations is to align the Highways Act 1980, the Clean Air Act 1993 and 13 local Acts with the terminology and processes that will be established when Section 33 of the Building Safety Act is enacted. Provisions in the Highways Act that relate to the payment of charges for street works when building control plans are deposited are amended to refer to new systems of applications for building control approval. Section 16 of the Clean Air Act is also amended. This section requires local authorities to check the height of proposed chimneys to ensure that they are tall enough to prevent smoke and particulates becoming prejudicial to health. It is amended to replace references to the deposit of plans with provisions that refer to applications for building control approval.

Similarly, 13 local Acts are also amended to replace definitions of the deposit of plans with provisions that instead refer to the new system of applications for building control approval. Further references to the deposit of plans in these acts are also updated to reflect the new terminology. Of the local Acts, 11 contain provisions relating to appeals to the magistrates’ courts. To align these Acts with the new procedure for appeals, the provisions are amended to direct appeals to the First-tier Tribunal. The instrument also contains a transitional provision providing that consequential amendments do not apply to plans for building work deposited before the date on which the regulations come into force.

I wish to reassure noble Lords that they will have the opportunity to scrutinise the specific requirements of the new system of applications for building control approval. These requirements were subject to consultation in 2022 and will be set out in a number of statutory instruments that amend the Building Regulations 2010 and provide for new building control procedures et cetera for higher-risk buildings. The Government will lay these instruments in the coming months.

The Government intend to bring both these consequential amendments regulations and the regulations that create the new building control system into force in the autumn. Without these consequential changes, the provisions of the Highways Act, the Clean Air Act and the 13 local Acts will cease to operate as they do now, as they will no longer have meaning once Section 33 of the Building Safety Act is brought into force. I hope that noble Lords will join me in supporting the draft regulations. I commend them to the Committee.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to comment on this statutory instrument and thank the Minister for the introduction she has given to it. It goes in partnership with Section 32, which is not yet in force. She has rightly drawn attention to the fact that it does not cover the question of the actual application process, which is going to be dealt with later. So it is rather a small cog in a very big machine to make sure that the system works effectively.

I do not propose to spend a lot of time commenting on the local building Acts, with which I once used to wrestle in a professional capacity. I am sure that rationalising those makes a great deal of sense, regardless of the building safety and high-rise issues driving this change.

I note the frequent references to the building safety regulator in what the Minister put to the Committee a few moments ago. I share her view that the regulator is an absolutely fundamental part of the new machinery and, clearly, will be pivotal to making sure that, ultimately, the machine moves and works. The Minister will know that I have already expressed my concern about proposed amendments that the Government have brought forward in the levelling-up Bill to potentially change who the regulator is, perhaps on a timescale that could very likely interact with the implementation of Section 32 and the bringing into force of a new application process. What consideration has the department given to the potential for this process and the very tightly drawn and carefully designed machinery, of which this is a small part, to continue to function—or, rather, begin to function—smoothly and without effort or distortion when the new system comes into play, as outlined in the levelling-up Bill amendments by the Government?

That is a matter that we will obviously return to at the Report stage of consideration of that Bill—I do not want to enter that debate now—but I hope the Minister will give us what reassurance she can that the machine of which this is a small cog is intended to continue working seamlessly in the event that the Government proceed with completely reshaping the building safety regulator sometime in the next two years.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th May 2023 Grand Committee

All I say to my noble friend is that there are very few things that we debate in your Lordships’ House that would put no cost on government. This is something that enables. I beg my noble friend to accept the spirit of these amendments so that, on Report, we could have something that we can all support, ideally in the Minister’s name.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I support the amendments in this group. We had a clear and compelling case put to us by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol. I thank her very much for that. She was very ably supported by the noble Lord, Lord Best, who emphasised what, to me, is the really significant part of the value that would come from the passage of these amendments.

Clearly, the heritage angle, which is one that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, dwelt on effectively, is important. However, in the context of the levelling-up Bill, I say to Ministers that the social and community impact of investment by parish councils in their local facilities is a key part of ensuring that we have some levelling up. Perhaps principally in rural and suburban areas, but throughout the country, it is absolutely normal—I would say commonplace—for church buildings and buildings for those of other faiths to be used by the local community for a wide range of community functions, such as recreational functions, learning and educational functions, and food banks, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Best. I should perhaps have said by way of introduction that I am a member of the Methodist Church. Quite close to me is a Baptist church, and a significant part of its building is used as a very busy food bank; that is by no means an unusual situation.

The Minister’s letter expressed the view that this was a small issue which affected only quite a specific, niche situation. I put it to her that there are thousands of buildings which at the moment are excluded from help by parish councils and which perform valuable community functions, and where that exclusion is pointless and disabling for the development of those facilities and that community. I hope that her approach to this is gradually changing. I hope that her most recent letter gives a little glimmer of hope that perhaps she recognises the force of the arguments being deployed today, which were set out so clearly by the right reverend Prelate.

I very much hope that the Minister will offer a commitment to re-examine this before we get to Report, and, if she is able, to persuade her ministerial colleagues to table an amendment on Report that we can all enthusiastically endorse. If not, and if the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol is minded to do so, I will certainly support her in an amendment of her own on Report.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I have made only one intervention in Committee, which was on my pet subject: leasehold. I will not do that today. First, I will get on the record a number of interests. I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association, the chair of a housing association in Kent, and a director of MHS Homes, as set out in the register.

I offer my full support to the right reverend Prelate in her amendments. This is one of these debates where all sides of the Committee are happy to come together. They can see the sense of the amendments and, as the noble Lord pointed out, they are easy amendments for the government to agree. There is no cost to the Government and they are passive—no one has to do anything at all. However, the amendments would allow people to do something if they want, which is the good thing about them.

I hope that, as the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, said, we will get a positive response from the Minister—at least a commitment to meet people, go back and talk to officials, and bring back a government amendment that deals with this issue and provides for clarity. That is what these amendments are all about: providing clarity on an unclear issue. I know that the Government would want to ensure that things are clear.

I should say that I was brought up a Catholic. I grew up in Elephant and Castle in south London. I would probably describe myself as a lapsed Catholic, but I was brought up as a Catholic and come from a large, Irish Catholic family. My two younger brothers and my sister regularly attended the youth club at St Paul’s, in Lorrimore Square, run by the Reverend Shaw—a wonderful man who retired a few years ago. He set up the youth club and a mental health drop-in centre. When he retired, I had become a local councillor. We went to his retirement do and you could not move in the place. There was a complete cross-section of the community—people of different faiths and of no faith. Everyone there knew what this man had done in that parish church in the Walworth area of south London. He had done everything. If you were a young person growing up in that part of south London, there was not really much else to do. This parish church had become the centre of the community. Why can it not be that if a local authority wants to support such a place, they can do so? It seems ridiculous that they cannot.

As we have said, this is about having clarity about what councils can and cannot do if they want to support different things. My experience as a councillor was many years ago, but I am conscious of the work that churches do now, as the right reverend Prelate set out herself. People in many different situations are going through difficult times and churches host different groups and organisations—people can go in just to have a cup of tea and be warm. Such places are really important in communities and, sometimes, all that is now there is the local parish church and the church hall.

I really hope that the Minister is convinced by what she has heard today. There have been many good arguments made around the Room. As the noble Lord, Lord Best, said, these amendments on their own would not do anything at all, but they would enable things to be done. I hope the noble Baroness will support them. I will leave it there.

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[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak extremely briefly and only to Amendment 499, just to ask the Minister two very basic questions.

It is my firm belief that, for far too long, there has been a failure by Governments of all parties to tackle the inequalities between rural and urban areas. So much of government policy is designed for urban areas and ignores the special and different requirements of rural areas. So, frankly, it is no wonder that there is a disparity in the cost of living between urban and rural areas. In rural areas, house prices are higher and wages are lower; council taxes are higher, but government support for their councils is lower; and the funding per head for services such as healthcare, policing and public transport is lower, but it costs more to provide those services. If you look at other issues, from broadband coverage to banking, you will see that rural areas lag way behind urban areas.

I said in my speech at Second Reading that the Rural Services Network used government metrics to come to the conclusion that, if all rural areas were treated as a single region, their need for levelling up would be greater than that of any other region. At the time, I asked what in the Bill would address that disparity. I ask again: in relation to this amendment, what aspects of the Bill will address the need to level up between urban and rural areas? Related to that is a question that I have also asked but that has not been answered: can the Government tell us how the absolute requirement for rural proofing of all legislation was carried out in relation to the Bill?

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to all three amendments. In different ways and on different aspects, they set out a clear path for the Government to address some significant issues that, unfortunately, are not covered in the main text of the Bill at present.

In passing, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, on his experience of public transport: welcome to everywhere that is not London. It is not just that there are no buses in rural areas outside London; he should try the urban areas.

At the moment, there are fundamental problems with how we deliver education to potential parents on how they might best help their children to develop and grow. There are also problems with delivering education in our formal education system for children and in our adult education and further learning courses and opportunities that are available to people not only immediately after leaving the school system but in later life. The noble Baroness, Lady Blower, made that point powerfully, and I will reinforce it: in a rapidly changing technological society, what you might describe as in-course training is vital, even for people like me, to discover how to use the latest devices properly and effectively. That is very much the case for those who come out of the education system with a limited level of skills, and maybe without even having the resilience and skills to learn and develop themselves without substantial help and assistance.

So we have a ladder: literacy is certainly an issue in the absolutely crude sense of the word—whether people can read and write—but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, pointed out, it is a question not just of that but of being able to use that process to inform and educate yourself, to learn from what people present and give to you. That shortage spills into an inability or failure, at the end of your school career, to get magic pieces of paper that are the doors to routes to acquiring skills and qualifications. Of course, that failure means that there is an inability to get and hold high-value, high-quality jobs.

The consequence for the individual is, clearly and very often, a waste of their potential, a lack of fulfilment and, sometimes, an alienation from wider society. But the impact for the community is also negative, and the impact for our country and economy is very negative indeed. I say to the Government that, for levelling up to be successful, there has to be more economic growth in areas that are not flourishing at the moment.

To best spend taxpayers’ money on levelling up, however and wherever that tax is collected, it needs to go to areas that need the growth and help. It is exactly those areas where there is that deficiency in skills and professional qualifications, and where it is difficult to recruit people. That means that we are not getting the productivity growth in the industries and geographies where they are most needed. For instance, we get high economic growth in London and the south-east but not in the north-east of England. Unfortunately, all of these are connected in a line that starts with the process of how children grow and flourish in our education and training system.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 22nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 467B and 467C address consequential amendments to the marine licensing cost recovery powers. Clause 214 gives the Secretary of State fee-charging powers for post-consent marine licence monitoring, variations and transfers. We are now adding a consequential amendment to clarify the position where there is an overlap between the general post-consent marine licensing fees and oil and gas marine licensing fees for the same activity, to provide that the oil and gas fees will apply in those circumstances.

Amendments 467D, 467E, 504GK, 504M, 509D and 513 will support the Government’s response to the eventual recommendations from the Grenfell Tower inquiry. The Building Safety Act 2022 set up the building safety regulator and its functions within the Health and Safety Executive. We continue to support the Health and Safety Executive in delivering these new functions, and I take this opportunity to thank it for its work over the last two years. To future-proof the building safety regulator and its critical work and protect the other important work of the Health and Safety Executive, the Government consider it essential that we have the option to move the building safety regulator to an existing or new body in the future. This will allow the Government to respond quickly, if needed, to the Grenfell Tower inquiry, which we expect to be published at the end of this year. I recognise that there will be concerns about how broad these powers are. To provide reassurance, the powers are affirmative and include a 24-month sunset provision, which can be extended only if needed and only after Parliament’s consideration.

In speaking to Amendment 467F, which introduces a new clause after Clause 214, I will speak also to Amendments 509C, 504N and 514. This new clause addresses a concern of schools that occupy premises held on special trusts for the purposes of those schools. Local authorities have a discretionary power to provide premises for academies, but there is currently no requirement to transfer the land, as exists for maintained schools. Instead, the local authority tends to offer the academy trust company a lease. If trustees hold particular premises specifically for a school and the school moves to other premises, they cannot carry out the purpose of their charity if nothing else is done, as their premises end up without a school.

The new clause ensures more consistent treatment across the system, where the local authority must transfer the new premises it is providing to the charitable school trustees. In exchange, the trustees must pay the local authority the proceeds of sale from the existing premises—or, if the local authority agrees, the trustees can simply transfer the existing premises to it.

I turn to Amendment 504HA. In the light of the successful passage of the Historic Environment (Wales) Bill through the Senedd Cymru, the Government are giving further consideration to the approach to the power under paragraph 7(2) of the new schedule to be inserted after Schedule 15 by government Amendment 412B. As such, I do not intend to move Amendment 504HA at this time.

Lastly, I turn to Amendments 504K and 504L. The United Kingdom faces constant threats to its national security, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made us all too aware. These amendments will ensure that Ministers can require information about properties that may be used to threaten national security, wherever they are in the United Kingdom.

I beg to move.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I want to comment on and ask some questions about the amendments in this string that relate to the building safety regulator: Amendments 467D, 467E, 504GK, 504M, 509D and 513. The Minister somewhat skated over their significance; I have some serious questions to ask. It is worth pointing out that these amendments tabled by the Government are so out of scope that one of the amendments is seeking to extend the Bill’s scope so that they can be included.

Briefly, these amendments would give the Secretary of State powers to scrap the building safety regime set up by the Building Safety Act, which was passed just 12 months ago. That regime, with a new building safety regulator under the auspices of the Health and Safety Executive, was a specific and central recommendation of the Hackitt review, which the Government accepted in full at the time and which had the sustained support of your Lordships’ House at every stage of the Bill’s passage. There was criticism of that Bill as it went through this House but it centred on the inadequate compensation provisions and the uncertainty created by the delay in bringing the regulatory regime fully into force, which does not actually happen until later this year. No concerns were expressed about the regulatory mechanism being set up.

The 18-month delay in the coming into force of that regulator was said by the Government at the time to be necessary to allow time for the regulator to set up shop and because of the need for the construction industry to train up qualified personnel and then deliver, in accordance with the regulator’s requirements. Bringing the building regulation system under the Health and Safety Executive was warmly welcomed on all sides. Again, the criticism was that its reach was too limited and should not be confined to high-rise and high-risk buildings; it was said that the regulator’s remit should be expanded. No voice was raised that this was the wrong model, still less that it was unfit for the essential job of upgrading building standards drastically and rapidly following the Grenfell Tower fire.

Last year, the Government resisted the expansion of the regulator’s role on the grounds that it had to learn to walk before it started to run. Since the regulator was appointed, multiple workstreams and training programmes have begun throughout the construction industry in what is undoubtedly one of the most challenging catch-up operations that it has ever faced. The industry has faced up to it because of the unflinching, no-holds-barred approach of the regulator—strongly supported, of course, because of the certainty that primary legislation gives it—means that it had no choice. There is no risk—or, in some quarters of the construction industry, no hope—of the regulator going soft over time because it is there through primary legislation with a very strong remit.

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[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I thank noble Lords for that interesting debate on the government amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, asked why this measure is necessary. The Health and Safety Executive has a strong identity and a regulatory background focusing on safety. That is why it was well positioned in 2020 to deliver the building safety regulator quickly, and why the Building Safety Act specified that the Health and Safety Executive—which, I say to the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, comes under the DWP—would be that regulator.

However, it is clear from the evidence given to the Grenfell Tower inquiry that the Government must provide stronger stewardship across the wider built environment, addressing safety alongside issues such as housing standards and the intergenerational impact of new buildings. That may require longer-term reform and could impact on building-related regulatory functions that are currently spread across multiple regulators and arm’s-length bodies. The Government must continue to consider the best vehicle to deliver that intent.

That does not affect the ambitious timeline for the building safety regulator. That is important work. We expect the regime to be fully operational by April 2024 and are determined not to impact on that programme. I say again that we are grateful to the Health and Safety Executive for all that it has done to bring this regime to life.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

I ask the Minister to consider the timeline a little more carefully. If the current regulator is not going to be in full flow until April next year, and if the Grenfell inquiry’s final report comes—as she suggested it would—some time next year, are the Government confident that they can maintain a viable building safety regulatory operation using the existing structure based on the HSE, properly staffed and properly led, through that transition period? Is she further satisfied that a two-year window following the publication of the Grenfell Tower final report is sufficient to undertake the very wide-ranging review that she has just been outlining? Would it not make more sense to pause that process and, once the Grenfell Tower inquiry’s report is received, take a measured look at all those together and produce a further Bill in good time, with proper consideration by your Lordships?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

No, my Lords, because we are not actually putting anything in place in this Bill. We are giving the Secretary of State the opportunity to do so if the Grenfell Tower inquiry comes out with something that it requires. I have no doubt that the building safety regulator will continue to work as it has always worked—with professionalism —to deliver that, and I am not hearing any issues from the building safety regulator.

The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, asked why these measures were not included in the 2022 Act. The Government recognised the need for major reform of the building safety regime to be delivered as quickly as possible, following the tragedy of Grenfell. The priority is now delivering this new regime effectively while remaining open to going further and faster wherever any evidence makes it clear that we should do so. We are just making sure that we are ready if the inquiry decides that we need to.

The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, mentioned transition, and of course it is important that, if there is to be another system, there is a good transition. The regulations will be taken through the affirmative procedure, as set out in these amendments, in close consultation with the HSE, and we will work with Parliament to ensure that they are delivered in a seamless and exemplary manner.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

I am sorry to trespass on the time of the Committee, but can the Minister give a clear understanding that the existing complete independence of the building safety regulator will be maintained when the Government come up with their new alternative? I remind her that considerable time was spent in this Chamber safeguarding the professional independence of the regulator and freeing it from the possibility of interference, by either the Government or other bodies.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

What I can assure the noble Lord of is that, if we do have to go down this route, both Houses of Parliament will have a say in that. I am sure that we will have long debates on it. The noble Lord also asked about accountability to the House. As I have said, the powers will be made under the affirmative procedure to ensure that the House is given full and proper opportunity to scrutinise any proposals if they come in due course.

The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, brought up the concerns raised by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in its 31st report of this Session. I reassure noble Lords that the powers that we are seeking to take in Amendment 467D are intended to allow us to change only the home of the building safety regulator, as created by the Building Safety Act. There is no intention or plan for fundamental policy change in that.

Moving on, the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, asked whether Amendment 467F was entirely about schools with religious foundations. There are also non-religious schools that have these charitable site trustees. We are not talking about academy trusts here: we are talking just about the charitable site trustees. They are mainly religious, but there are others that are not.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, also asked whether the trust required proceeds from the original premises to fund—no, I am sorry, this is something that I asked. It might be interesting to the noble Baroness that, if the trust required proceeds from the original premises to fund new schools, I was concerned about that. It has been made clear to me that capital funds come from local authorities where there is a need to provide sufficient school places, so I hope that will also put the noble Baroness’s mind at rest.

I was asked where the local authority fits into this. It will be in no worse a position than if the same schools had relocated as maintained schools or as foundation and voluntary schools, where the local authority would be obliged to provide the new site and transfer it to the trustees. Land would be held for the purposes of the academy, with appropriate protections for public value, including that the land could ultimately return to the authority if in future it is no longer needed for a school, so the local authority is protected on that.

The noble Baroness also asked whether it is a compulsory swap and what local consultation there would be for the local authority on the swap. It would be a compulsory swap only if the trustees are being asked to surrender their interest in the current site in exchange. We would expect such arrangements to occur only after the usual processes for relocating a school, which would include consultation and a consideration of the impact of moving places from one site to the other. All those issues would have been looked at.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, asked whether—I cannot read this.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 18th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I am not sure that is right. To take affordable housing, in an area with lower housing-cost needs and where housing is of lower value, you cannot expect the same infrastructure levy for houses and land of £150,000 to £350,000, so you must get that balance right. However, with levelling up, we would expect the values to come up and level as we go through the levelling-up procedure.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

The noble Baroness makes a very interesting point, but the problem is that construction costs are not as widely differentiated as land costs. This means that an area with a low level of levy will not be able to build an equivalent number of homes to an area with a high levy. The mismatch between costs and income will be the problem.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I take that point. We have talked about the different rates from different development typologies, and we expect local authorities to set different rates. As the noble Baroness said, they do that with COUNCIL for different development types. We have published research that shows the range of possible rates for different case study areas, and I have put the results of that research in a letter.

For all these reasons, the Government are introducing the new infrastructure levy through the Bill and it is the correct thing to do for the country. There are too many local communities that, with the CIL system and the Section 106 system, are not getting what they deserve from the developments in those areas. So a new system, however difficult it is or however long it takes to deliver, has to be the right way to go.

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My Amendment 386A would link the repeal of Section 71 of the TCPA 1990 to the first making of EOR regulations. That would therefore enable the current regime to be amended, if need be, before the point at which the EOR regulations first used create a new power that would be able to amend the existing EIA regulations or introduce EOR regulations. I commend those amendments to my noble friend.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 372A in this group. Previous speakers have invested a huge amount of time in devising alternatives and improvements to the existing legislation, and I support their efforts very much. My amendment is much more basic and straightforward, and based less on research and more on intuition. It says that no new standards should be set lower than those in force at the time that the Bill comes into law. It is just a very basic, no-steps-backward amendment.

I am well aware that Clause 142 is, at least in essence, saying the same thing, except that it has a get-out clause, which has already been spoken to. It balances one sort of harm offset by another sort of good, all to be decided by a Secretary of State. That is not a no-steps-backward provision at all.

This kind of issue, the discretion being given to Secretaries of State, has come up on several previous days. We have had many earnest assurances from noble Lords on the Front Bench that there is every intention of maintaining, indeed increasing, the level of protection. It was said just this morning in relation to council houses; we are going to have more social provision, not less, as a result of the changes, and we are to trust them. Well, I am sorry to tell noble Lords that there is still a degree of uncertainty in the minds of many of us about how those promises will be delivered.

I have to say that Conservative Governments have proved quite transient things. We have had four Secretaries of State since this time last year and at least three fundamentally different approaches to housing targets and the levelling-up Bill. At least one key feature of the levelling-up mechanism set out in the White Paper was scrapped only this week—the regional levelling-up director posts—at, apparently, a saving of £144,000 a year for each of them.

There is a right royal battle under way, on and off stage, among senior Conservatives, aimed at setting our country free of all the enveloping red tape that stifles innovation and money-making. That is a paraphrase, but I hope not an unfair one. Mr Rees-Mogg, Mr Redwood and the Home Secretary are all hoping for a return to one or other of the alternative models of levelling up that Conservative Governments have played with over the last 12 months. Those versions have had lots and lots of levelling up, none at all or several mixtures in between.

So I ask noble Lords and the Front Bench Ministers opposite: what is the future of environmental outcomes reports? What guarantee is there that standards will not be allowed to drop, or perhaps even required to drop, in future, as red tape is cut and industry set free to make money and innovate? The current safeguarding guarantees are time-limited, fundamentally, to the assurances given by Ministers in Hansard. Based on the last 12 months, that level of protection is somewhat transient, and Clause 142 has its own get-out, as has already been pointed out.

If you look out of the window and see big clouds rolling in, you know that it is sensible to take your umbrella with you when you go out. That is common sense, not paranoia. If you look out the window and see big blue clouds rolling in from Bournemouth, or this weekend from Westminster, it makes even more sense to have your umbrella with you. My Amendment 372A is that umbrella. Yes, I want to see the other amendments in this group adopted, but surely we have to secure in the Bill the standards that we already have. That is why I have tabled Amendment 372A.

[The Duke of Montrose (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment, which has been coupled with this group. We are now moving on to Part 6 of the Bill, which involves Scotland. We have heard about all these doubts and areas that need to be cleared up, which are even more worrying for devolved Administrations.

My amendment is to Clause 143, “Requirements to consult devolved administrations”. I declare my family’s interest, as noted in the register, in that we own land in Scotland. We are fortunate; it is not a big area in Scottish terms, but it includes part of a national park, a nature reserve, a site of special scientific interest and special protection areas. As the Minister pointed out in an earlier debate, this is the section of the Bill that is most likely to affect devolved competencies. There can be no doubt that the Bill is causing much concern in the UK’s devolved Administrations, and we have just been hearing about the extent of the existing Henry VIII powers. Anyone who has spent any time in this Chamber knows that we are allergic to Henry VIII powers, and I hope that my noble friend can assuage us on the extent to which they will be included.

In the earlier debate on Clause 83, my noble friend rejected my proposed amendment. That issue only involved powers regarding planning data. Clause 143, as drafted, is a mirror of that text:

“The Secretary of State may only make EOR regulations which contain provision within Scottish devolved competence after consulting the Scottish Ministers”.


My Amendment 382 provides that, following the consultation, the Secretary of State must report the outcome and provide reasons. This is surely a necessary step for transparency and to maintain the trust between the parties on an ongoing basis. Consultation implies that all will put their cards on the table; agreement, as we all know, is harder to achieve. My noble friend may like to say that we would carry out these steps anyway. This amendment as drafted does not give any more power to devolved Assemblies but just gives them the comfort of knowing exactly where they stand.

It was further encouraging to hear my noble friend say, in his reply to an earlier debate, that

“the Government are continuing to work with the devolved Administrations to understand whether there is scope to extend the EOR powers to provide a shared framework of powers across the UK. Once those discussions have concluded, the Government will bring forward any necessary amendments to both Part 6 and Part 3 to reflect the agreed position between the UK Government and the devolved Administrations”.—[Official Report, 22/3/23; col. 1803.]

A shared framework of powers is precisely what this amendment is aiming to achieve. There is always the danger that, without achieving this framework, and with one party withholding consent, the outcome might go against any changes at all.

The Scottish Parliament’s legislative consent Motion for this measure was tabled on 27 July 2022. As I mentioned before, the main one of the three committees to give it consideration was the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee. In its report, brought out on 22 December, it could see some elements of the Bill that it welcomed. But, after taking evidence, it concluded that:

“Environmental Outcome Reports would lead to a significant change to environmental assessment in Scotland. However, the UK Government has not provided sufficient clarity around how they will operate in practice.”


Similar concerns were also highlighted by both the other committees in the Scottish Parliament. After consideration, all were still not prepared to grant approval.

The Government have introduced quite a raft of amendments to the Bill already. It would be interesting to know whether some of these are the fruits of their intergovernmental discussions, but we are still a long way short of achieving an agreed framework. Can my noble friend say whether that is still their aim?

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[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, apart from the Government, I have the bulk of the other amendments in this group so I thought I would go through them now. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Willis; she is very knowledgeable and it is interesting to hear what she has to say. She brings an extra dimension to our debates on this issue, and I hope the Minister will agree with that.

Part 7 provides an opportunity to address nutrient pollution, particularly from development. There is a duty on water companies to upgrade their sewage disposal works; that is welcome, but some of our amendments are to do with the wording, because we are a bit concerned that the wording about how water companies are to deliver the required upgrades is unnecessarily prescriptive. For example, Amendments 391 and 393 look at how the Government have come to the wording of the exemptions. Amendment 391 is to new Section 96D in Clause 153, which says:

“A plant is exempt … if … it has a capacity of less than a population equivalent of 2000”,


while further down it says,

“the plant has a capacity of less than a population equivalent of 250”.

The amendments probe where those figures have come from and why they are there.

My Amendment 400 probes whether broken sewage monitoring stations are contributing to sewage discharge. We are aware that Ofwat has recently announced that water and sewerage companies will face increased penalties from 2025 for using faulty or broken equipment to measure pollution from storm overflow pipes. Obviously we welcome that announcement, but the Government and the regulators need to enforce existing legislation. My amendment would place a duty on the Secretary of State to monitor the situation so we would ensure that what is legislated for actually happens. The narrow focus on sewage disposal works locations also means that the upgrades will be delivered onsite, usually through the traditional engineering methodology, which the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, talked about—using concrete, steel and chemicals has a high carbon cost.

My Amendment 401 probes the implementation of the environmental action plan. It asks the Minister for an explanation of how that is related to Part 7 and how it all ties together.

My Amendment 402 probes the potential for rebuilding sewage works with new concrete and steel rather than creating woodlands, reed beds and wetlands. The noble Baroness went into a lot of detailed explanation about why we need both options. A prescriptive site-specific approach closes down that environmentally beneficial alternative for upgrades. Habitat restoration can be done from wetlands and riparian woodlands and you can enhance farmland through hedges—the Minister knows all this. It would be good if that were also included as an option.

We know there have been pioneering partnerships between water companies and nature organisations, including locally where I am in Cumbria, and they have demonstrated how effective habitat restoration can reduce nutrient pollution levels and achieve nutrient neutrality. Again, why not use those pioneering partnerships to drive forward best practice? Other countries have done so, such as Belgium, so there is proper evidence and information as to why that is a good way forward.

I shall be brief because we still have quite a bit to get through. I finish by reiterating our strong support for everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, has said and her amendment, and I urge the Minister to consider accepting it. We also support the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Stunell.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 393ZA is in my name and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, for her support in advance. I want to offer my support for all that the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, said. It was extremely knowledgeable and powerful, and I hope very much that the Minister will be able to give her a positive response.

My amendment responds to the specific ambiguities in the text of the clause in front of us. Clause 153 amends the Water Industry Act 1991, and in its new Section 96D(5) it provides that:

“The Secretary of State may by regulations specify”


which sewage treatment plants are exempt from control of nutrient discharge. That subsection (5) follows a couple of preceding subsections which detail, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, pointed out, that plants of a particular size are exempt in any case. As I understood it from reading the legislation, very small-scale plants might be exempted. On top of that, we have subsection (5), which says that the Secretary of State may by regulations specify any sewage treatment plant that they decide is exempt. It is exactly the same area of concern that I expressed previously: it would appear that the Secretary of State is being given a free card to decide on exemptions, additional to those written into the earlier part of the new section.

A less scrupulous water company—we all know that they have suddenly become extremely scrupulous, which is very good to hear; of course, I absolutely take what they are saying in good faith—might think it worth while pursuing an exemption for a plant to avoid the costs. The noble Baroness, Lady Willis, has alluded to the substantial costs for them if they are required to comply. That is reflected pretty fully in the concept in the same clause: that if an exemption is ever withdrawn—in other words, if you thought that you had an exempt plant but the Secretary of State decides that the exemption is withdrawn—there is a seven-year period in which to become compliant. Once the exemption is withdrawn, you have seven years to get back into compliance. That indicates the cost and difficulty somebody would face if they found themselves with a plant which they had to make compliant.

The point I am trying to make, not very articulately, is that there is a real benefit to an operator in avoiding having to put in the necessary measures which this clause prescribes. There will be voices raised and pressures brought to bear on the Secretary of State to be very relaxed, and to operate subsection (5) in addition to the statutory exemptions in the preceding subsections. One could imagine that the greatest pressure would come from somebody operating a sewage plant which had had persistent breaches in standards that they regarded as being too onerous or expensive to comply with. They would make some special pleading to the Secretary of State that they should be exempted. That is exactly the situation that ought to be strongly resisted, and which this legislation should prevent happening.

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Development corporations, and locally led ones, are a very useful tool for regeneration, particularly of brownfield sites in former industrial areas. However, it must be done in a way that responds to local needs, where local representatives can be heard and be part of the decision-making process, and the planning and environmental concerns are those of the local planning authority and the local council.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I support what the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, said, as well as what my noble friend Lady Pinnock had to say about this.

I need to start by saying that I worked in the architects’ department of a new town for 13 years and lived in that new town during its raw development stage. Noble Lords will not be surprised to hear me say that I believe that the development corporation model has a proven track record, usually of building communities with all the essential infrastructure in a joined-up way. The Government are right to see the development corporation model as one means of accelerating necessary development, and I welcome the presence of these clauses in the Bill.

However, I will just briefly reflect on my experience. During the 1960s and 1970s, the new towns were very top-down in conception. The New Town Act made the development corporation I worked with simultaneously the client, the designer, the planning authority and the funding channel for the delivery of the projects I worked on, which was a very cosy situation for those of us working on the projects but not so good if you lived next door or sometimes literally underneath where we were developing. The later generation of urban development corporations mostly paid better lip service to local democratic institutions than that.

However, there are deficiencies, and my noble friend Lady Pinnock has put her finger on one of them. It is good that the relevant clauses inform a model whereby development corporations spring from local government initiatives and are not to be imposed by somebody with a map sitting in Whitehall. That brings me to my first question to the Minister. Clause 156(2) still reserves the power to declare urban development corporations independent of any local proposals—the Secretary of State can in fact sit behind a desk in Whitehall. Do the Government have in mind making any such designations, and if not, why do we have Clause 156(2) in the Bill?

My second question relates to the consultees listed in Clause 156(4), which inserts new provisions. Indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, refers to that in her Amendment 407. A very good part of that clause says that local government is to be involved even if it is not the commissioning authority. There is then a less good list of what local government consists of. Very surprisingly, it does not include parish and town councils. They are not listed as statutory consultees, although district and county councils are. There is a parallel provision in the legislation for the urban development corporations to what we might call the green belt ones. In each case, parish councils are left out. In any normal use of language, they qualify as local government, do they not? They also qualify as legislative and statutory as well, so it is a great puzzle to me why they are not there. An important point is that they will probably be the best informed about their areas, and at a detailed level which certainly will be missed by county councils, for instance. I therefore want to hear from the Minister why parish councils are not statutory consultees.

The Minister may say that there is a catch-all here;

“any other person whom the proposing authority considers it appropriate to consult”

is among the consultees. However, that is an option for the consulting authority, not a statutory consultation partner. If you want to rely on that catch-all, why not rely on it for county councils? If it is blindingly obvious that you would always consult a parish council, and therefore you do not need to say it, it must surely be blindingly obvious that you need to consult the county council, so you do not need to say that. If you are mentioning one, why not the other?

Secondly, what led to the omission of town and parish councils? If it was an oversight, will the Minister please correct it on Report or at least tell us that the inevitable statutory instrument will make it unambiguously clear that any town or parish council in or in the vicinity of a proposal should be consulted as a matter of course? I would be very happy to receive an answer by letter, if that makes it easier.

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, has explained, this group of amendments concerns development corporations. I am grateful for the broadly supportive comments from noble Lords for these provisions.

Amendment 403 probes the issue of local accountability, which was a theme picked up strongly by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, whose amendment I will come to in a moment. One of the key priorities of the Government’s levelling-up agenda is to empower local leaders and communities. Introducing a new, locally led urban development corporation model will support local aspirations for regeneration without the need to establish a body accountable to central government, but which is instead accountable to local authorities. For it is local authorities—local councillors, elected by their local community—who will be the originators of the proposal and oversee the locally led development corporation, ensuring clear democratic accountability.

We completely recognise the importance of community involvement and participation in the creation of locally led development corporations. That is why we have included statutory public consultation arrangements for locally led urban and new town development corporations in the Bill, which proposing authorities must implement before submitting their proposal to the Secretary of State.

We intend also to use regulations to set out further details on the composition of board membership and aims of the oversight authority for locally led urban development corporations, as we did in relation to locally led new town development corporations in 2018. In appointing independent members, we expect the oversight authority to ensure that the board has the relevant skills and experience needed and includes those with an understanding of the local area.

I turn to Amendments 404 and 405. We recognise the importance of ensuring that appropriate scrutiny has taken place, including from the local community, where a proposal is being developed to designate the development area of a new settlement or urban development area and establishing a locally led development corporation. As I have mentioned before, we have included provisions for statutory public consultation where people can have their say on the proposals at the formative stage before it is submitted to the Secretary of State. When the proposal is received by the Secretary of State, they will look very carefully at the robustness of the plans, including at community involvement and views expressed, before making a decision on whether the proposal is expedient in the local interest and making an order to designate the development corporation’s development area.

The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, asked whether all planning would become the responsibility of the locally led UDC and whether all powers would transfer from the local authority to the locally led urban development corporation. The answer is no—or rather, not necessarily. It is for local authorities to propose and for the Secretary of State to decide, under his discretion, whether and to what extent functions should transfer.

The noble Baroness and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, also asked about the conformity of locally led UDC development with local plans. A development corporation that takes on plan-making or development management functions will be subject to the same rules as a local planning authority. I would be happy to fill out that answer in writing, if I may.

Amendments 404 and 405 are therefore an unnecessary addition to these consultation requirements. They would slow down the designation of development corporation areas. The purpose of designating the area is to determine the area in which the locally led development corporation will operate and deliver a programme of urban regeneration or a new town. There will be further opportunities for the local community to have its say on the planning proposals for the area as proposals for development come forward through the planning system.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 24th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a member of the board of the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation.

Designation as an NSIP, a nationally significant infrastructure project, has a blighting effect. It differs from a normal planning permission in that the Government become something akin to a co-partner in a project that is designated an NSIP, supporting it because of its national significance. But what responsibilities fall on the Government as a result of this co-partnership, sponsorship or promotion of a particular project? In particular, what obligations fall on them to avoid or mitigate any persistent blight that might ensue?

An egregious example is the expansion of Heathrow Airport. Noble Lords may not know that I have been a long-standing opponent of the expansion of Heathrow Airport for over 10 years. More importantly, not only do I oppose it but I think it is unworkable and undeliverable: it involves either moving the M25 or building a runway over it, its cost would exceed £18 billion when the whole market value of the airport is significantly less than that, and so on. But there it is: the designated status remains present for Heathrow Airport’s expansion, and the blighting of the area—the effect that it has on the surrounding villages, on housing and on other land uses—remains.

An example from Ebbsfleet relates to the Swanscombe peninsula, a large triangle of land that, so to speak, protrudes into the Thames. It is within the red line of the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation as a planning authority, but the corporation does not own it. Proposals for a privately funded resort, of the character of a Disneyland or whatever, were given nationally significant infrastructure project status as long ago as 2014. Very slowly, the company promoting it advanced to a position in 2021 of being able to submit a DCO. In the meantime, it suffered the bolt from the blue of Natural England turning up out of nowhere—or, specifically, out of Ebbsfleet International railway station—and designating it a site of special scientific interest. This ability of Natural England to appear out of nowhere and designate sites as SSSIs at the same time as they are nationally significant infrastructure projects is worth exploring in a different debate. Then the DCO was rejected by the planning inspectors for, among other things, not having a transport plan attached to it—a point that had been made repeatedly to the company by the corporation in its role as planning authority. Now I read in the newspapers that the company recently went into administration.

However, the blight on the land and—while there are not many of them—on the existing industrial occupants of the land continues. I do not mean by this any criticism of the developer and I do not regard its failure to deliver the project, at least to date, as a criticism of it. Private sector projects inherently involve the taking of risk. It is right that we have an economy where risk is taken, but one of the corollaries of taking risk is that not all businesses or projects succeed, so the fact it has have not succeeded is not a criticism of it.

However, that is not my point; my point is to ask where the Minister is in all this. Where is the department that agreed to the designation, all of nine years ago? It is true that the Minister has written recently to the company, asking how it plans to progress. But since the company is in administration, I am not sure what answer he expects to get. Apart from that, it is hard to see how the Government have engaged with furthering this project, which they regard as nationally significant.

My amendment is intended to be very gentle. It places very little obligation on the Government but it would require them, three years after designating an NSIP, to review progress—that is all—“and annually thereafter”, with a view to seeing whether the project is actually going to be delivered. It then says that the Secretary of State may decide to cancel the designation. That power to cancel is already in existing legislation—the Planning Act 2008, as amended—so I am not conferring a new power. I am simply implying that he or she should consider it as a result of a review of progress. This would at least show that the Government share a responsibility for the progress of projects which they have designated as nationally significant. It would help to mitigate the blight that they cause, in effect, by showing that degree of engagement, review and possible cancellation.

I regard this as a very modest amendment, and one that it would be easy for my noble friend on the Front Bench simply to accept as drafted. I look forward to her response and hope that that is indeed what she agrees to do.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I give three-quarters support—I was going to say half-hearted support—to what the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, has moved by way of his amendment. The nationally significant infrastructure projects programme was quite a radical change when it was introduced. It was seen as a way of what one might call railroading—except that would perhaps be unfortunate given some of the projects—or delivering national projects which would be perpetually trapped in the local planning system should they go by the conventional route.

It is something of a planning bulldozer, and I absolutely share the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, about the expansion of Heathrow; we are on the same page as far as that goes. It is equally clear that, if a project such as Heathrow was ever to go forward, it would not survive the local planning processes, so the existence of a nationally significant infrastructure project mechanism for delivery is certainly well justified in the legislation. The question is: what happens when a project begins to fade from the priority list of the Government or, for that matter, that of investors in a private project? The noble Lord has produced two examples, known very well to him from his personal work experience and career, which illustrate the point.

I say to the Minister that surely there should be some process of project review in central government. The Built Environment Select Committee—I was a member until January—considered that in some detail, in looking at some evidence that we received in relation to reports. The committee took evidence from various parties. Who is actually in charge of the oversight of whether projects will proceed, are proceeding or are making progress? The committee was not convinced at that time that the Government had a viable and clear process for deciding that a project was or was not a priority, what that priority might be or what its consequences might be. The idea that there is a national pipeline, with projects neatly lined up going in at one end and coming out completed at the other, is fanciful. However, that is the way that the thinking, and often the public expression, about having a national infrastructure plan is expressed.

I am with the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and this amendment, but I see it much more as being about hearing from the Government that they have a review process, that the review process is capable of taking a hard decisions, and that, when it takes a hard decision, it makes it operational on the ground so that we do not have huge areas, such as those around Heathrow, that are blighted. Indeed, on the peninsula on the Thames estuary, to which the noble Lord, Lord Moylan referred, progress is going in no direction. In the presence of a Section 35 designation, nobody else can go there either. It is essentially a dead development area, which I would have thought the Government would be anxious to avoid.

I am keen to hear what the Minister believes the mechanism is and whether, in the judgment of the Government, it is effective. If it is effective, it should be quite easy to answer the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, on how long it will be before the Ebbsfleet peninsula is de-designated. I suspect that it would be difficult for the Minister to de-designate Heathrow at the Dispatch Box today for a variety of reasons, but I hope that it is clear the direction from which I am coming, and that the Minister in replying can give us some satisfaction on this before we proceed further.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

I will come in very briefly. I certainly see the point of the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and of the three-year review. I am not convinced that yearly after that is necessarily the right way to go; it could be a longer period between the reviews. However, I see the point he is making, and the problems it causes if things do not happen in an area.

I will leave it there, other than to say that I have always been a backer of Heathrow expansion. I want to put that on record because we have had a couple of people opposed to it. I think it would be good for the economy and that we should get on with it.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Moylan for tabling Amendment 284. I shall not be commenting on any individual planning case at all. Obviously it would not be correct for me to do so.

Amendment 284 seeks to ensure that the progress of applications, in circumstances where a Section 35 direction has been made, is monitored and kept under review by the Secretary of State. I agree that developments, especially nationally significant infrastructure projects, should enter our planning system efficiently, and doing so is crucial for ensuring that local communities and businesses can express their views on the real impacts that these projects can have on them.

The NSIP consenting process has served the UK well for more than a decade for major infrastructure projects in the fields of energy, transport, water, waste and wastewater, and has allowed these projects to be consented within an average of around four years. Some of these projects enter the NSIP planning system under a Section 35 direction. This is the beginning of the planning process for some projects and offers prospective applicants certainty that they can take their projects through the NSIP consenting process. This consenting mechanism has been used successfully by 18 developers and allowed them to capitalise on the benefits that the NSIP regime offers.

Very occasionally, applications for development consent can be delayed or even withdrawn. This applies to applications that either automatically qualify as an NSIP under Part 3 of the Planning Act or are directed in through Section 35. This often occurs to allow developers time to ensure that applications entering the system are of the standard needed to efficiently and robustly undergo the scrutiny required. I acknowledge that this can translate into uncertainty for some communities, businesses and investors that have the potential to be affected by such projects.

Under Section 233(2) of the Planning Act, the Secretary of State already has the power to revoke a direction to treat a project as an NSIP, and thus no longer allow the project in question to enter the NSIP planning system through these means. The Secretary of State may consider using this power, for example, if it becomes clear that the rationale or basis on which the Section 35 direction was made has changed, so this is no longer the correct and appropriate consenting option for the project in question. I appreciate why my noble friend has raised this amendment, and I hope he will withdraw it following the reassurances I have provided.

The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, and others brought up the interesting issue of oversight. We are currently working to set this up. Minister Rowley is setting up an IMG which will look at the cross-cutting issues on projects, but he cannot get involved in the specifics on projects, in order not to prejudice, obviously, future decision-making, particularly as a Planning Minister. I will also take on board the issue that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, brings up about the capacity within local planning authorities to deal with these very big projects. I think it is something we can feed back in and I will do so.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

I thank the noble Baroness for a very helpful answer. Will she say something about the actual timeline for this group formally starting work? She suggested that it was going to start work in the fairly immediate future: perhaps some sort of timescale could be provided.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I do not have a timescale tonight, but I will talk to Minister Rowley and try to get one for the noble Lord and let him know. As I say, I hope my noble friend will withdraw the amendment following the reassurances I have provided.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Stunell]

285AA: Clause 123, page 156, line 37, leave out lines 37 to 39 and insert—
“(d) a Combined Mayoral Authority with devolved planning powers.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment removes the power in the bill to make incidental provisions in relation to devolved competencies, and inserts combined Mayoral Authorities with devolved planning powers into the exemptions that regulations may not make provision in relation to.

[Lord Stunell]

I speak to Amendment 285AA, which refers to Clause 123. It is by way of a probing amendment, and I would have explained to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, had he been here, that the missing quarter last time was about how probing or speculative it was. I make no secret of the fact that mine is a probing amendment. The first few lines of Clause 123 were the red flag that made me put down this amendment. It reads:

“The Secretary of State may by regulations make such amendments and modifications of the relevant enactments as in the Secretary of State’s opinion facilitate, or are otherwise desirable”.


There follows a long list of things to which the Secretary of State may, if in their opinion it is useful, make changes. It is another clause with very wide-ranging powers given to the Secretary of State, and the purpose of giving them to the Secretary of State is not at all transparent.

What is perhaps relevant, and is certainly the reason for tabling the amendment, is that subsection (7) contains some exceptions. It reads:

“Regulation under this section must not make any provision which is within”—


Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland,

“unless that provision is a restatement of provision or is merely incidental”

and so on. It is a clause with wide-ranging powers which do not apply in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, unless, again, the Secretary of State has the opinion that they are a restatement or merely incidental.

My amendment removes the exceptions to that, so there is proper devolution to the three national legislative bodies in those three nations, and adds a fourth exception to the application of the clause, which is for combined mayoral authorities. I could have added a whole lot more as well, but the amendment is in the spirit of devolution and making sure that we do not allocate to the Secretary of State powers which are not needed and which, in the hands of a different Secretary of State, might be abused or misused and might have unforeseen bad consequences.

I want to hear in clear terms from the Minister: why we need the clause at all; why it has to be in such wide-ranging terms; and, with regard to the exceptions for the three national Administrations, why even within that, there is an exception built in which allows him or her to impose powers. Why does he not take the opportunity to make devolution in England mean something more substantial by saying that, in combined mayoral authorities, such powers as may be needed in Clause 123 may be exercised within that authority and not simply cascaded down from Whitehall?

I see that the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, has given notice of his intention that the clause do not stand part of the Bill, and I would say that that is very much of a piece with my amendment. We have here a clause which is neither necessary nor useful and absolutely not contributing to levelling up in any way. I beg to move.

[Lord Carrington (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests in farming and land ownership as set out in the register. I agree with every word that the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, has said; I would perhaps go a little further in some areas.

My understanding of Clause 123—and, therefore, my reason to seek its removal—is that, through its inclusion in the Bill, it seeks to give authority to any Government to amend primary legislation that underpins planning and compulsory purchase legislation through the means of secondary legislation. Such changes might have a profound impact on the way planning is delivered. It is not appropriate that this legislation gives such a wide remit to the Government to change primary legislation for an objective that is yet to be determined without the full scrutiny of Parliament through debates in both Houses.

In other words, Clause 123, which gives the Government the ability to consolidate and amend compulsory purchase legislation, should be deleted from the Bill as it gives the Government too wide a remit to encroach on property rights without a clear objective. It could lead to changes in compulsory purchase legislation that tip the balance further towards the developer and away from protecting the home owner’s and landowner’s rights. The ability to amend more than 25 key pieces of primary legislation, described as “relevant enactments” in Clause 123(2), in any way that any Government see fit—potentially with limited consultation or scrutiny—must raise very serious concerns.

Additionally, it is premature to propose amending compulsory purchase legislation before, as I understand it, the Government have received the outcome of the Law Commission’s review into compulsory purchase reform. There is also the matter of the lack of a government response to the consultation on compulsory purchase compensation, which is still awaited despite the Government including some of these controversial measures in this Bill. The department is clearly in breach of the consultation principles, which state that it should:

“Publish responses within 12 weeks of the consultation or provide an explanation why this is not possible. Where consultation concerns a statutory instrument publish responses before or at the same time as the instrument is laid, except in very exceptional circumstances (and even then publish responses as soon as possible). Allow appropriate time between closing the consultation and implementing policy or legislation”;


that last point is relevant in this particular case. Planning legislation is the foundation of so much, particularly in the rural economy. There is a real risk that growth of the rural economy and housing delivery could be held back by amendments that have gone through without proper scrutiny.

I look forward to hearing the Government’s response and reasons.

--- Later in debate ---

As we have been discussing in relation to much of the rest of this part, the Government want to give more clarity to participants in the planning system. As I have said, these amendments start addressing the legislative barriers to this by providing powers to make technical changes to prepare for future consolidation. Any changes made under these powers can come into effect only where there is a subsequent consolidation Act, and the use of these powers would be subject to the affirmative procedure before your Lordships’ House and the other place. I hope I can reassure noble Lords that this is not an attempt to circumvent the proper scrutiny of this highly complex exercise. I repeat: these powers are to support consolidation, which does not extend to changing the policy effect of legislation. Noble Lords can be reassured that the regulations cannot come into effect without a connected consolidation Bill being enacted.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

I thank the noble Earl for taking us through what for some of us is a kind of grade 1 learning experience, which he has dealt with very effectively. I have some considerable concerns which remain. I wonder whether he could go back to a point that he made in response to the noble Baroness a few minutes ago: that it was so complex and there were so many different pieces of legislation that it was not possible to give a list of all the complexities and so on which were involved. He also spoke about trust, and how the whole system might be undermined by opaqueness. If I connect those two remarks, he will perhaps see that to some extent the opacity means that the trust is not present on this side of the Chamber at the moment.

[Earl Howe (Con)]

I am sorry to hear that. The point I was seeking to make is that the general public need to trust the law and know what the law is, as does anyone dealing with the planning system. That is why the Government’s ambition is to put in train a consolidation exercise, which may take a considerable time. I have been quite frank with the Committee that there are not only 50 Acts that we know about which deal with planning and compulsory purchase, but—as my notes say—innumerable other Acts which cross-reference those 50 Acts. It will require a major legal exercise to bring all the threads together.

I cannot commit to a timescale for consolidation from the Dispatch Box today. There is a large amount of work to do before we can get to that stage and that will naturally have to be balanced against the wider legislative programme. It is for that reason that we are asking for this power to prepare the way—I think that is the best way of putting it—to make the ultimate consolidation a more achievable exercise.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Howe (Con)]

Consolidation by definition does not extend to changing the policy effect of legislation.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I think the noble Earl will have detected a degree of unease right around the Chamber about how this clause will take effect, not just in the course of this Administration but in the hands of a different one at a future date. I have heard the discussion and learned a lot. I will need to read Hansard and the noble Earl’s letter when it comes and take a view on whether this is something to take further forward. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 285AA withdrawn.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 18th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am very glad to follow my noble friend and to heartily endorse and agree with what he had to say about the importance of inclusiveness and inclusion by design. In this group of amendments, I also endorse firmly the importance of design as an integral part of the planning system. As I understand it, the Government are firmly in that camp. They believe that design can ensure that we create far more fit-for-purpose places in which to live. That is what design is all about: fitness for purpose. The Government also think that they can be beautiful places. I am sure each of us has our own view of what beauty might be in this context, and I do not suspect that we can easily write it into legislation.

What is rather interesting is that we have in Schedule 7 a reference to the fact that local authorities must prepare such a design code. Of course, behind that lies—as ever in debates on this section of the Bill—the National Planning Policy Framework, which has within it the idea of what those design codes must look like. Even behind that, there is the national model design code—fine. But then let us have a look at what is in the relevant chapter of the Government’s draft National Planning Policy Framework. Here, I want to go back to the discussion we had earlier. I will not repeat it all, but it was essentially about the centrality of environmental principles, the achievement of our net-zero objectives, nature recovery strategies and biodiversity net gain. All those things are terrifically important, so you would imagine, would you not, that because design and place-making have to start from core principles, they would be reflected in the National Planning Policy Framework when it considers what well-designed and beautiful places need to be, but that is not how it works at all.

Before I expand a little more on chapter 12 of the draft National Planning Policy Framework, let me just say that it is not me saying that environmental principles are central to this issue. The Royal Town Planning Institute, together with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and friends from LDA Design, whom I know well—I declare an interest; my son-in-law works for them—worked on a document called Cracking the Code, which was published a year ago, about the national design code and the question of how that should reflect environmental principles. Let me quote one paragraph from the report:

“Design codes should have a critical role to play in planning for the future of places and ensuring that opportunities to maximise development’s contribution to net zero and nature recovery are locked in from the outset, through strong spatial development frameworks and strategic design requirements. Codes can outline ways for developments to combine net zero and nature recovery with place making and encourage unique and innovative approaches to green and blue infrastructure and the role of landscape.”


So, they captured the whole centrality of the environmental argument in a paragraph.

The practicalities of this are immediately evident. If you are designing new towns now, which will be built mostly in the 2030s and will be lived in through the 2060s, 2070s and 2080s, you have to think about what a carbon-free public space—and, for that matter, private space—looks like. What does the transport look like? What does the heating look like? How do people live? How do they move around? There is no point designing places that do not take full account of those changes that are in prospect.

You would find all that in the National Planning Policy Framework, would you not? There is brief reference somewhere here to the environment, but not much. What there is, however, is a list of the things that the design codes and design processes should reflect. It includes visually attractive, good architecture; sympathy to local character and history; a sense of place; optimising the potential to sustain development in the future; safe, inclusive, accessible; promoting health and well-being. These are all admirable, and there is then a full paragraph on trees, but I cannot find anywhere else any reference to nature recovery, biodiversity, environmental principles or the processes for how design can contribute, and is central, to the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

I seek to reassure the noble Lord that it will be covered in regulations.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

It might be covered in the national model design code, but I do not think that is how it looks at the moment. The purpose of this document last year was to say, “Put it into the national model design code”. Logically, if you are going to do that, you have to at least signal its importance in the National Planning Policy Framework. Otherwise, all your guidance —because, technically, that is what it is—simply does not cohere together. What we have discovered, which is at the heart of many of these arguments, is that in large measure we do not yet know—we are still to debate this—how far what the Government say in the National Planning Policy Framework will be national development management policies and, by extension, cannot be varied from in local plans. So we have this inexorable relationship between things that we do not know and how it is going to turn out in the future.

Amendment 222 is very simply saying, because we do not know and cannot find evidence of the centrality of these environmental principles to the national model design code or the National Planning Policy Framework, let us put them in the Bill. All I am doing in this context is saying that, at this stage, I want to know that they will be central to the design approach—and if they are not, they ought to be. I hope that Ministers will be able to reassure me on that point.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

My Lords, this group of amendments concerns requirements relating to design, as we have heard. Ensuring that the planning system creates more beautiful and sustainable buildings and places is a key objective of this Government. I quite accept that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but it will be for local people to decide on design, and I think local people know their area better than anybody. This is demonstrated through the measures set out in the Bill for mandatory design codes, as well as those measures undertaken in response to the findings of the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, which include updates to the national design policy and new guidance on how to prepare design codes in 2021.

I begin by addressing Amendments 217 and 302, tabled by my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond, which focus on the principle of inclusive design. Amendment 217 would introduce a legal requirement for local plans to conform with the principle of inclusive design. It would also require local planning authorities to modify their local plans where they have received relevant observations or advice in relation to this from a person appointed by the Secretary of State. Amendment 302 would introduce a legal requirement for local planning authorities to ensure that planning and development must be predicated on the principle of inclusive design.

The Government agree that ensuring that development is designed to be inclusive for all is essential to meeting the aims for sustainable development. That is why the National Planning Policy Framework already makes clear that local planning policy should ensure that developments create places that are healthy, inclusive and safe. This means local planning policies and decisions that promote social interaction and accessibility, and which enable healthy lifestyles.

This is supported by the National Design Guide and the National Model Design Code, which illustrate how well-designed, inclusive and healthy places can be achieved in practice. Both documents advise local authorities on how the 10 characteristics of well-designed places can inform their local plans, guidance, design codes and planning decisions to create successful neighbourhoods that contain a rich mix of people, including people with physical disabilities and those with mental health needs. Through local design codes, local authorities should consider a wide variety of housing tenures and types in the design of new developments to meet a range of different needs, such as housing for older people, as we have spoken about at length today, and supported housing to meet the needs of vulnerable people.

Furthermore, the Bill will require all local planning authorities to prepare local design codes at the scale of their authority area, either through their local plan or as a supplementary plan, giving them significant weight in decision-making. The national model design code asks that, in preparing design codes, consideration must be given to how new development can promote inclusive design by creating buildings and spaces that are safe, social and inclusive, with an integrated mix of uses that are acceptable for all.

My noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond was particularly interested in shared spaces. The national model design code recognises that streets should be designed to be inclusive and should cater for the needs of all road users as far as possible, in particular considering needs relating to disability, age, gender and maternity. However, there is also the Manual for Streets, which seeks to ensure that streets are designed to be accessible and inclusive. The DfT is updating this guidance, which will form part of a suite of guidance across DfT and DLUHC to secure better outcomes for communities. I hope that my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond will understand that we are clear that this is already being addressed through national planning policy and supporting guidance on design, and that this is not an amendment that we feel is necessary.

Before discussing Amendment 222, tabled by my noble friend Lord Lansley, I want to make it clear that I have heard the concerns of a number of noble Lords, over most of the afternoon, around the publishing of the NPPF. All I can say at this time is that it has been out to consultation, as we all know, with the public and stakeholders, and more details and more announcements will be made in due course. I have heard the views of the Committee and I will take them back and discuss this further with officials.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

I remind the Minister that, on day two, she made similar noises about a draft of the statement of levelling-up missions. She did not make a promise but said that she had heard the call for those too to be in front of noble Lords before Report. I hope she can add that to her shopping list when she talks to officials after today’s session.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I will. I will look back at Hansard and ensure that we get exactly what the noble Lord wants. To tell the truth I thought he had already got it, but I believe what he says and will see that he gets it.

The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill would require all local planning authorities to prepare authority-wide design codes as part of their development plan, either as part of their local plan or as a supplementary plan, as I have said before. The Bill already includes the obligation, found in the new Sections 15C and 15CC of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, as inserted by Schedule 7, that local plans and supplementary plans must be designed to secure that the development and use of land in the authority’s areas contributes to the mitigation of, and adaption to, climate change.

In addition, the National Planning Policy Framework sets the policy expectation that plans take a proactive approach to adapting to and mitigating climate change. It makes it clear that local plans and decisions should contribute to and enhance the natural and local environment. The national model design code provides guidance on how local design codes can be prepared to ensure well-designed places which respond to the impacts of climate change, through ensuring that places and buildings are energy efficient, minimise carbon emissions and contribute to the implementing of the Government’s biodiversity net gain policy.

I understand and agree with the importance of this subject matter. We are clear, though, for the reasons I have set out, that this is already being addressed through the Bill, national policy and design guidance. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, will understand that this is not an amendment that we feel is necessary.

I hope I have said enough to enable my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond to withdraw his Amendment 217, and for other amendments in this group not to be moved when they are reached.

--- Later in debate ---

I am aware that there are other amendments in this group. However, as I have been speaking for some time now, instead of commenting on them—which we are broadly supportive of, on the face of them—I will listen with interest to the rest of the debate. I beg to move.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to the amendments in my name in this group. I start by briefly reminding noble Lords that I am a member of the Marple neighbourhood forum, which is drawing up a neighbourhood plan which we hope will go to a public referendum later this year at some point.

I turn back briefly to the situation in 2010, when, whatever the rulebook said, the statutory planning and development programme across England was reduced, in essence, to a two-stage process, where the developer proposed something and the community opposed something. It was a very polarised process. The neighbourhood plan process was put in place to reverse that, so that it became a situation where the community proposed and the developer developed. It has been a remarkably successful plan over the subsequent 10 years that it has been in place.

At the time, there was huge scepticism about the idea of neighbourhood plans. Officials in the department did not like it; I hope that Ministers do not face that backdrop now. The RTPI did not like it, and developers all thought that it would be the end of the world for them. Some critics thought that it would be a complete dud and a dead letter that no local community group would be prepared to take up to carry out the work, with the threat or risks, if you like, that come from consulting the community and facing a public referendum at the end of it. It is interesting that those critics have melted away because the criticisms have melted away. They have not proved to be a nimby charter; in fact, they have proved the reverse—to be a successful way of promoting additional housing allocations. It has to be said that that was not their primary purpose; the primary purpose was to restore planning to what it should have been in the first place, which is a co-operative way of developing good outcomes for local communities that are forward-looking and forward-facing to meet the needs of the future.

One of the criticisms which perhaps has some truth, but not all that much, is that neighbourhood plans are for rich, posh, rural areas. However, the very first one signed off was actually in London, so it certainly was not rural. In fact, there are 16 neighbourhood plans within Greater London at the moment, and I know that in my own metropolitan borough there are at least three in progress. On the other hand, I note that nearly every town in Wiltshire, plus the city of Salisbury, which is one of the biggest local councils in the country, have neighbourhood plans either done or in process at the moment. So the evidence is that they can flourish very successfully in rural, suburban and urban areas.

Clearly, from the point of view of the debate we are having today, the most significant fact is that, coincidentally and counterintuitively, they also give more homes, which are developed more quickly than through the standard planning process. The developer wins and the local community wins, the local planning authority and councillors avoid all the political distractions of the planning fight, and the Government get more homes that they want. I apologise to noble Lords because I know I can get very defensive about neighbourhood plans when I think people are trying to tread on them or disparage them, so I hope I will be excused for defending them very stoutly.

There should be more neighbourhood plans across the country, and that brings me first to Amendment 235, which I and my noble friend Lady Scott of Needham Market have tabled and which is supported by the National Association of Local Councils—that is parish and town councils around the country. NALC reports that a minority of local planning authorities have in fact been deliberately obstructive of the establishment of neighbourhood plans—maybe that is a mixture of professional pride from planners and the capacity to engage with local communities. For some councillors it represents some kind of notional loss of control or influence if they might be usurped by a local community’s neighbourhood plan. In some cases, even if they are not outright hostile, they have very much stood back and watched, hoping that nothing much would happen to upset their overstretched and very stressed planning operation in their rather cosy planning world.

Whatever the Minister may be inclined to say about the amendments in this group, if she were to accept this, and place a duty on local planning authorities to facilitate neighbourhood plans, she would get an immediate boost of neighbourhood plan applications, and therefore an immediate boost to her housing targets. It would also be helpful to hear what other plans the Minister has to facilitate and encourage neighbourhood plans much more widely.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, has just outlined and drawn our attention to the streamlined process that appears in the Bill, which certainly we welcome. Maybe the Minister could make it clear how that affects existing neighbourhood plans that have not yet got to the point of referendum, examination or sign-off. Is it the case that, if they are on one track they are stuck with it, even if the other would be quicker or simpler, or is it possible to change? Maybe the new system could be spelled out to us a bit more clearly—what exactly is being saved? As the noble Baroness asked, is this an addition to or a supplement of some of the processes that there are at present? Whichever way round it is, it is essential for the Government to back neighbourhood plans, at least as one of the solutions to the conundrum they face about how to get extra housing.

Amendment 236 is also supported by NALC and signed by my noble friend Lady Scott of Needham Market—who would have been here but for the change of the date of this Committee, which meant unfortunately she is away today. It seeks to protect those neighbourhood plans that are awaiting sign-off during the transition period between the current planning regime, as it is unamended by this Bill, and the new regime that will be introduced, one way or another, when the Bill is introduced. Those plans are in some jeopardy if they are about to go to a referendum, or even to a public examination at the end of the process, and all of a sudden the goalposts are changed and they can no longer be presented without going back through the whole process.

That would be particularly difficult for neighbourhood forums to handle, because they are one-task volunteers, set up and drawn together by the local neighbourhood plan process. It would not be easy for parishes, but at least they have an enduring public existence, which means this is just one aspect of their work. For both of them, a measure of reassurance and certainty is required that their work so far has not been in vain.

We have proposed in Amendment 235 a simple transition amendment. If the Minister feels that it is not the right transition amendment, we would of course be very open to hearing a better version from her—but I hope that she will at least acknowledge that that double jeopardy must be avoided if the integrity of the process is not to be undermined in those areas. I do not know the exact scope of that, but there would probably be about 300 or 400 neighbourhood plans that were at an intermediate stage that would be subject to such disruption.

I move on to two other amendments proposed by me. Amendment 232 is an amendment to Clause 91 to leave out new subsection (2C), which says, among other things:

“The neighbourhood development plan must not … include anything that is not permitted or required by or under subsections (A1) to (2A).”


I want to examine in a little more detail the words “not permitted or required”. Both this amendment and the subsequent one, Amendment 234, are examples where the drafting of the Bill is unfortunate at best and possibly worse, because it seems as though they are efforts to limit and clip the wings of what neighbourhood plans are capable of delivering for their local communities. As I have explained already, that would materially slow down and damage the Government’s own wish to reach housing targets.

My question is about what exactly new subsection (2C) on page 98 means. With

“anything that is not permitted or required”,

it seems to me that there is an important element missing from that list. Assuming that it actually means what it says, as the provision seems to have a double negative in it—but let us skip that for the moment—let us suppose that a community develops a proposal that the Secretary of State has not thought of, and let us suppose that it is not on his non-exhaustive list of permitted things. When can innovative and imaginative new approaches fit in, if you have to check first whether it is a required or a permitted function?

What is the process for adjudicating whether a proposal that a neighbourhood forum wishes to make meets this vague and ill-defined limitation? I fear a ministerial reply that says that it will all be covered in regulations. From the point of view of an amateur community-led neighbourhood forum, that translates into more impenetrable red tape, and a general perception that the powers that be—the Ministers and whoever they are in Whitehall—would much rather you never started, because it is so confined and for that matter so foggy that it is just never going to be worth the effort.

A local planning authority has a general power of competence to cover this situation, of course. If it is not required or permitted, and if it is covered by the general powers of competence, they can do it. My question to the Minister, apart from what on earth it means, because the actual wording seems faulty, is what harm this provision seeks to prevent. Is it a purely hypothetical harm which, if I may say so, her officials have dreamed up as being something to bung in, or has the Minister got even one example by way of illustration of where this has gone desperately wrong because the wrong things have been taken into account?

If the Government’s support for neighbourhood plans is genuine, are they making them a more daunting prospect for local communities by accident, in which case I suggest this is something they need to consider? I have already set out my view that there is more to come in the Bill about how neighbourhood plans should be encouraged without having chunks of the Bill that are hostile, at least in outcome if not in intention, to the development of neighbourhood plans.

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[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, neighbourhood planning has been a great success story. I went into it with my council, probably at the same time as the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, and it was difficult to begin with, because it was very new and communities did not understand it. What I think is good about neighbourhood planning now is that all that groundwork has been done by many councils across the country, working with many communities. Therefore, for new councils and new communities coming on, I think it is going to be a lot easier as we move forward.

I thank noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, who is obviously a guru on neighbourhood planning, for their support. As I say, I am also fully in favour of it, as can be seen by what has happened in Wiltshire. It has been a great success story; it has given many communities a much greater role in shaping development in their local areas and ensuring they meet their needs.

The Bill retains the existing framework of powers for neighbourhood planning while at the same time providing more clarity on the scope of neighbourhood plans alongside other types of development plan. However, we recognise that the take-up of neighbourhood planning is low in some parts of the country, and we would like to see more communities getting involved. This is why the Bill introduces neighbourhood priorities statements. These are a new tool, and they will provide a simpler and more accessible way for communities to participate in neighbourhood planning.

On Amendment 225 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, perhaps it would be helpful if I set out some detail about the intended role of neighbourhood priorities statements in the wider system. A neighbourhood priorities statement can be prepared by neighbourhood planning groups and can be used to set out the community’s priorities and preferences for its local area. The provisions in the Bill allow communities to cover a range of issues in their statements, including in relation to the use and development of land, housing, the environment, public spaces and local facilities.

Neighbourhood priorities statements will provide a formal input into the local plan. Under new Section 15CA of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, inserted by Schedule 7 to this Bill, local planning authorities will be required to “have regard” to them when they are preparing their local plans. This will be tested at examination. While some communities will use them solely to feed into the local plan process, we also expect that they will operate as a preliminary stage to preparing a full neighbourhood plan or a neighbourhood design code. In these ways, neighbourhood priorities statements will feed into the planning process. Furthermore, they may also act as a springboard for other community initiatives outside the remit of the planning system.

Amendments 227, 229 to 232 and 234 deal in different ways with the scope of neighbourhood plans. On Amendments 227 and 231 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Hayman of Ullock, we acknowledge that delivery of affordable housing within national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty can be a challenge and that neighbourhood plans can play an important role in supporting provision. However, I do not agree that these amendments are necessary. Clause 91 specifies what matters communities can choose to address within their neighbourhood development plans. It does not prevent communities including policies relating to the provision of affordable housing in the plan area. All policies in neighbourhood plans, however, must meet the statutory tests, known as the basic conditions, before they can be adopted, including that they must have regard to national policy.

I draw the Committee’s attention to specific measures we have taken to address this issue. Paragraph 78 of the National Planning Policy Framework sets out a rural exception sites policy. This allows for affordable housing to be delivered on sites that would not otherwise be developed in order to meet specific local need for affordable housing, the majority of which will be required to remain permanently available to those with a local connection. In 2021 the Government published planning practice guidance to further help bring forward more of these sites in future.

Furthermore, I point to our decision to allow local authorities and neighbourhood planning groups in designated rural areas to set and support policies to require affordable housing from a lower development threshold. The threshold can be five units or fewer, compared with the threshold of 10 units in other areas. We will consult on how the small sites threshold should work in rural areas under the infrastructure levy.

I turn to Amendment 229 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock. Under the reformed planning system, it will continue to be the role of the local planning authority to set a housing requirement number for neighbourhood plan areas as part of its overall development strategy. As under the current system, where neighbourhood planning groups have decided to make provision for housing in their plan, the housing requirement figure and its origin would be expected to be set out in the neighbourhood plan as a basis for their housing policies and any allocations that they wish to make. The allocation of housing has not changed; the neighbourhood takes the planning housing requirement from the local plan. As the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, has said, across the country we have seen neighbourhoods adding to that number rather than taking away from it.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

I thank the Minister for responding very positively. I wonder whether the Minister could say, if that is the case, why she feels it is necessary to have such a prohibition on dropping below that threshold when local circumstances might very well dictate that a sensible outcome is to drop that total—not out of nimbyism but because, for instance, you do not want the houses to be underwater?

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th March 2023 Lords Chamber

I believe that this amendment fits absolutely with the amendments that we have been debating on healthy homes and the health of individuals. I hope the Minister will be able to support it.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, has put before the Committee a powerful programme, which is actually a renewal programme for our country and for every community and household within it. He set out a compelling case for doing so, obviously based on a lot of campaigning skill and professional skill as well. Other noble Lords have added a lot of detail about the benefits that would come.

I have put my name to seven of the amendments. I do not plan to say everything that has already been said. However, I will pick up one or two points that have already arisen. First, we can anticipate that the Minister is going to say, “Don’t worry, it is all fixed. Everything is already included”. I say to the Minister that our confidence in that would certainly be improved if we did not have a record of permitted development rights which have put into play not just a few but tens of thousands of homes that are deliberately below the standards mandated for and expected of all other new homes. The Government apparently support the Healthy Homes Bill in principle, but you have to get past the principle. All the work has been done by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp. It is all here. All the Minister needs to say is, “That’s fine, we will accept the amendments”.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby spoke about the impact on health in communities. I would add life expectancy in communities. There is a very significant connection between well-being and life expectancy and the number of healthy years that people can expect to live. It is surely the essence of the levelling-up agenda that those discrepancies and disparities are put right. I hope to hear some favourable words from the Minister, particularly as it is the next big step needed at a time when the traditional reliance on economic growth as the sole measurement of a country’s strength and resilience is losing traction.

It is losing traction not just with pale green fringe operators such as me but with tens of thousands of ordinary households around the country, which have seen all the economic growth bypass them completely. They have seen a standstill in their living standards, with little hope of progression. Building their resilience and well-being, leading to community growth, is the way ahead. It is, surely, a direction of travel that the Minister can accept. Almost by definition, the biggest losers of the mirage of growth of the last decade are those most in need of levelling up, which this Bill is supposed to be delivering. I urge the Government to listen to this debate with great care and convey to their colleagues in Whitehall the urgency of responding in a positive way to all that they hear today on this pivotal issue.

I have also put my name to Amendment 484 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale. The noble Lord made a compelling case for improving our 23 million homes and all other buildings in England to support the health and well-being of those who live in them and to make them carbon-neutral. If I had spotted it in time, I would have certainly added my name to Amendment 504GF in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. I agree with every word she used.

I remind noble Lords that I am an honorary fellow of the ICE and an honorary president of the National Home Improvement Council. I also lay claim to steering through the Sustainable and Secure Buildings Act 2004 in the other place, which set in train the subsequent uplifting of building standards on energy performance. However, that does not give me any grounds for complacency.

As the noble Baroness said in introducing her amendment, we have been building homes to a lower standard in energy-efficiency terms than we needed to, because in 2016 the new Conservative Government scrapped the move to zero-carbon standards which the coalition Government had signed off. We have built, pretty slowly and with lots of hiccups, 1 million new homes since then to lower standards than would have been the case if those proposals had come into force in 2016. That means that those 1 million homes themselves will have to be upgraded before we get to the standard required by 2050.

Of course, I have already mentioned the rush of converted homes under permitted development rights. It is not just energy performance that is bad but even basics such as daylighting may be missing in their case. The Town and Country Planning Association drew attention to that in its brief. Again, I have been pre-empted by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby quoting the Building Research Establishment figures of the millions of people living in unhealthy homes with hazardous conditions far away from the well-being that should be the case—all of whom would be beneficiaries of a fresh start with a healthy homes policy.

The noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, pointed out that the existing regulations are not tough enough even to capture all operational carbon emissions, which are responsible for about 30% of our carbon emissions. It is not a small slice, but he is also right in saying that the slice is declining because slowly we are decarbonising the way that we run our homes. However, the still provisional date of 2025 to finally catch up with the standards that were going to come in 2016 means that every lost year is adding more poor-quality housing stock and building in costs for the future.

Amendment 484 aims higher and goes further in requiring the Secretary of State to get cracking on the regulations to measure and limit the whole-life carbon emissions of buildings. The noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, has laid out very clearly what that is and how it can be achieved. This is not a wild swing at an impossible task; it is based on serious and important work by those who have been developing the Part Z initiative to be a new part of the building regulations. It has, as he said, the backing of the industry as well as many others. I hope again that we can hear the Minister say that there will not be any more dilly-dallying in the department, that it is moving forward to see what its version of Part Z would be and will be bringing it to us in the form of regulations very shortly. Just for once I will not make my traditional complaint about too many regulations. This is one that is needed, and it is needed very quickly.

That is a practical first step to cutting carbon emissions from our built environment. It opens the way to thinking in new ways about how to use and reuse existing buildings—a point that the noble Lord, Lord Best, also made. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say and I look forward to hearing that he is going to take back to the department and to his officials that the route to zero carbon needs to be taken seriously and that the need to level up by adopting the healthy homes standards set out in these amendments should be followed through. If, in response to all of this, the answer is no and the intention to act is “not at all”, Ministers can expect to hear more about all these issues on Report.

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

My Lords, I was pleased to add my name to Amendment 241 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham. I support the various amendments that the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, has tabled on healthy homes, and other amendments in this group.

I start by taking my cue from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, who said, rightly, that we need to be open and explicit in what we are asking for. That is quite a straightforward challenge. I suspect that most people in this country want to live in congenial and liveable neighbourhoods where kids can walk to school, where there is somewhere to play outdoors in the holidays, where older folks can pop along to a local shop, perhaps bumping into a neighbour along the way; neighbourhoods in which we design out pollution, obesity and crime. All of that is the art of the possible. Not doing so, even though in the short term it may appear that it will be more costly to get it right, has hidden long-term costs for the taxpayer, which a number of noble Lords have mentioned—whether that is obesity, pollution or crime. The fact is that these decisions, when they are made in the built environment, have consequences which last for a generation. Bad decisions have consequences which spill over for many years to come.

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In the 2022 Autumn Statement, the Chancellor announced plans to establish the Energy Efficiency Taskforce to support a 15% reduction in energy demand across the whole economy in 2023, with the group meeting for the first time in March. The Government have already set out their ambition to phase out fossil fuel boilers from 2035 and scale-up heat pump deployment to kick-start the transition to low-carbon heat, as noted in the heat and buildings strategy.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

I really appreciate the detail that the Minister is going into but would he concede that these initiatives are all by way of announcements rather than actual programmes for action? Every week, I hear from people who work in the industry about their uncertainty over the actual programme that the Government have and the strength of belief that they should put into the assurances issued because there have been so many false dawns. I do not want to rejoin the debate completely but I urge the Minister not just to read out a catalogue of initiatives and press releases but to tell us some hard news about progress planned and delivered.

[Earl Howe (Con)]

I have already spoken for rather a long time. If I can add some further detail to what I have already said, I think it would be appropriate for me to write to noble Lords about that. I hope and believe that the Committee will welcome the announcements that the Government have made and the direction of travel that we have set. We could be criticised if we had not announced such a direction of travel because there is no disagreement in principle between any of us as to how important this agenda is.

On the goal that I have set out—the phasing out of fossil fuel boilers and the scaling up of heat pump deployment—we are currently taking steps towards decarbonising heat, including through the £450 million boiler upgrade scheme and a new market mechanism in the heating appliance market, along with heat network trials zoning. The Government are already working with industry and local authorities to develop new heat networks and improve existing ones, investing more than £500 million in funds and programmes. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, that real money is being put behind these programmes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I will contribute to this group in relation to the two amendments in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham. In existing legislation, Section 19(1B) and (1C) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 states that:

“Each local planning authority must identify the strategic priorities for the development and use of land in the authority’s area… Policies to address those priorities must be set out in the local planning authority’s development plan documents (taken as a whole).”


Therefore, the legislation has it that strategic priorities must be set out and policies must be set out to meet them.

Paragraph 21 of the National Planning Policy Framework in the consultation document recently issued says that:

“Plans should make explicit which policies are strategic policies. These should be limited to those necessary to address the strategic priorities of the area”.


Paragraph 17 states that the development plan

“must include strategic policies to address each local planning authority’s priorities for the development and use of land in its area.”

Therefore, the legislation is carried through into the National Planning Policy Framework. Also, the NPPF is clear that there is an important distinction to be made between strategic and non-strategic policies. I will not dwell on those now, as it is not relevant for this purpose. Suffice to say that “strategic” in front of policies seems important.

However, the Government have decided to omit “strategic”, to omit any reference to strategic priorities or a requirement that the local plan in a plan-making process should identify those priorities and show how policies meet them. I cannot for the life of me understand why. I admit that these are probing amendments to find out why. I do not think that, as a proposition, the structure of the NPPF in paragraphs 17 and 21 should be left stranded, with the relevant legislative provisions in Section 19 of the 2004 Act being omitted and not being substituted with anything in the current legislation that gives rise to that part of the NPPF.

The Government may say, “Well, it’s guidance and that’s fine—that’s what we’re saying”. Until now it has been perfectly understood that there is a legislative structure, and that the guidance follows it. I am not sure that we should arrive at a position where there is guidance with no legislative structure underpinning it. I cannot see any mischief in putting the strategic priorities and strategic policies back in. I see no mischief in putting “strategic” in front of “policies”. It avoids any lack of clarity about what kind of policies we are talking about. I cannot see why the Bill should not be amended to put it in line with where the current situation is and where the NPPF intends to go.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I briefly follow-up on that question which the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has left hanging.

We seem to have several moving parts here. I do not want to detain anybody any longer than necessary. We have the guidance of the NPPF, and the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has outlined its current impact on how local plans are developed. We now have the statutory NDMPs. Eventually we will get used to that acronym, I guess. Earlier this evening, the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, told noble Lords that she thought that the occasions of conflict between the NDMPs and local plans would be very rare, so rare that they did not need referencing but, on the other hand, possibly so onerous that it would be burdensome to make every one be referred back to your Lordships.

However, the political context of the NDMPs is of trying to retrieve a situation that was created last year by multiple changes in direction within the department, and by Ministers, about what they wanted local plans to achieve. Do they want them to achieve a very large number of houses, no houses at all, or as many houses as the local area thinks are appropriate?

All that will be resolved when—eventually—the NDMPs are published, because that is when we will be told what the Government intend local plans to produce. At that point it seems foreseeable—I say only foreseeable, not certain—that there will be areas of conflict between the citizens’ assemblies brought forward by the noble Baroness’s amendment and the common consultation process that we have traditionally followed, as the local plan emerges and the NDMPs dictate a different course of action. Where does the guidance to which the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, referred fit into that? Which fits into what and at which part?

In an earlier debate, the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, also said, perhaps not with the conviction that I had hoped to hear, that, in the event of a neighbourhood plan being more up to date than a local plan—hence in date—it would stand up against an NDMP central government directive. I would be delighted if that is true, but I would be substantially surprised if she says that she did say that; I must have misheard something.

We have some moving parts here, and it is a terribly inconvenient time of the day to resolve those difficulties. A lengthy letter may be the solution, but I just pose those questions. This is the fundamental way in which the current Government are aiming to square a circle out of their national planning policy. Whether they want more houses, where they want them and how fast—all those things—are driven by what comes out of local plans, and they will be framed by what is in the NDMPs, which are not published. Forgive me if I am jumping to a conclusion here; perhaps the planning management policy that comes out will say, “It is okay, guys; do your own thing and send your local plans in when they are ready”, but I have a feeling that that is not the context in which they are being drawn up.

Anything that the noble Earl or the noble Baroness can say to clarify that situation, either this evening or in a subsequent written report, would be gratefully received on this side, because we are baffled and bemused by how this is all supposed to hang together, as things stand.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 209 in the name of my noble friend Lord Lansley and myself but, before I do, I will speak briefly to two amendments mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor.

Amendment 198 is about deliberative democracy or citizens’ forums as they are sometimes known. When I, as somebody who has been a councillor and an MP, first heard of this, I was slightly suspicious of this alternative form of problem-solving. It struck me as slightly random and unaccountable. But the more I looked into it, with the help of Graham Allen, the former Labour MP who championed the cause of deliberative democracy, I began to change my mind. The Government have actually been funding three experimental projects using deliberative democracy—one in Dudley looking at the future of two shopping centres, one in Cambridge looking at how to solve congestion, and one in Romsey looking at how to solve problems around a local bus station. It struck me that these were actually ways of complementing and reinforcing local democracy, rather than substituting it.

At a time when democracies are struggling to retain public confidence, we should look at every possible means of refreshing democracy in a way that is relevant to the modern world. This is what that amendment wants. Like others, I have been to planning meetings where people have been shouting at each other; there must be a better way to find a way through. I look forward to working with the noble Baroness who moved this amendment, as she obviously has considerable experience. Perhaps the Minister will let me know, following the three trials funded by the DCMS, whether her department will engage with the Local Government Association to see how we can best take that debate forward.

I am afraid that I disagree entirely with Amendment 223 and the suggestion that the adopted plan should be up for review after a local election. The one thing going through this debate since it began is the need for certainty and clarity about the local plan. It has to go through a process to become adopted. If there is a local election just after it has been adopted and control changes hands and it is up for review, what then is the status of that local plan? I very much hope that my noble friend will resist, perhaps more politely than I have done, the suggestion in Amendment 223.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have not heard Amendments 191A and 191B extensively discussed; it is possible that I zoned out earlier. I have two points. First, proposed new subsection (5) in Amendment 191A says that a national development management policy must contain

“explanations of the reasons for the policy, and … in particular… an explanation of how it takes account of Government policy relating to the mitigation of, and adaptation to, climate change.”

That is a very welcome requirement, if the Government pick up on it, but it is huge. Having that in there will have a vast impact on policy and what will be done, because so many aspects of our life impact on our response to climate change—the design of our transport systems, how we handle our energy, the kind of houses that we are building, how we make the facilities outside the house that people need accessible to them. This would be a really encouraging development if the Government were to go down that road. I had hoped to hear from the Benches opposite some advocacy of their amendments in this direction. I hope that they mean this seriously.

My second point concerns the aspect of these amendments and others that says what the role of Parliament is in looking at the development of national development management policy. We have another Bill with us, the REUL Bill, in which this is a very cogent consideration. I very much hope that this House holds firm and says that Parliament does have a role here and that we will not let this Bill away without insisting on it.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I want to ask a question based on the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. He said that the crucial point of the Bill and these clauses is the role and primacy of the two documents—the development plan and the national development management plan—and where they stand in that relationship. Clause 86 makes it clear that the NDMPs take precedence over the development plans if there is a conflict. But where does a third document stand, which the noble Lord also mentioned, the NPPFs, which were introduced via the Localism Act 2011? The document replaced a two-foot-high pile of codes, practice notes and so on about planning. In the instant that it was introduced it was controversial because it reduced the amount of planning paperwork that people needed to have knowledge of and refer to, and it made access to the planning process much easier for lay people and for councils. It seems to have proved its worth and to be a useful document. Echoing the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, my question is: is this document now effectively a dead letter? If it is not, where does it stand in relation to the two documents which are given a mention in Clause 86 and in subsequent policy?

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, this is probably one of the key groups of amendments on planning in the Bill, as it sets out the strategic framework under which local plans will be created and planning applications will be determined. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, started us on the right track by saying that we believe in a plan-led system; the question is, “Who leads the plans?” Which one is going to be most important —the national management development plan or the local plan? The local plan currently has primacy in planning legislation.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 15th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 122A, which is in this group. Before I start, I want to say how much I appreciated the contribution just made by my noble friend Lady Harris of Richmond, which illustrated another example of Ministers putting provisions into Bills which they do not fully understand themselves. If they had spoken to any chief constable, any chief fire officer, or possibly anybody from North Yorkshire they would have known that this will not work. It will be very interesting to see how the Minister responds.

My amendment takes a broader look. It is not specifically concerned with the clauses relating to the problems my noble friend so ably outlined. It addresses the phrase which appears time and again:

“The Secretary of State may by regulations”,


et cetera. I ploughed my way through the first 38 clauses, and 18 start with exactly those words, three start with

“A Minister of the Crown must”

and four simply start with “Regulations may be made”. So 25 out of the first 38 clauses essentially say that the Secretary of State can do what he likes.

My amendment is not about that. It is about Clause 38(4), which goes far beyond that. It states:

“The Secretary of State may by regulations amend, revoke or repeal a provision of or made under an enactment in consequence of provision”


in subsection (1). To paraphrase, the Secretary of State can change his mind at any time and change the regulations to suit. It occurs to me that it would have been much quicker for the Government actually to take out those 38 clauses and to have a simple one-clause Bill, the first subsection of which would say, “The Secretary of State may by regulation do whatever he chooses”, and the second, “The Secretary of State may by regulation make any change of mind he has at any time he chooses”, because that covers the essence of these 38 clauses. Explaining the extent of the Secretary of State’s powers takes 245 pages in the memorandum, so it is, even by the Government’s own reckoning, a significant problem.

Almost nothing of substance appears in the Bill. Everything is subject to regulations. Even the missions are not defined, and every attempt so far to pin the Government down on any detail, or even on the broad principles, has been resisted by the Front Bench opposite. Everything is left to the supreme genius of the Secretary of State for the time being to decide what is to be done and how. In this case, in this clause, he or she is allowed to change his mind, to revoke, repeal, et cetera. Of course, that will produce regulations that we can, if we are lucky, in due course express an opinion on but which we ourselves in Parliament certainly will not be able to amend, revoke or repeal. The Secretary of State is taking powers that are certainly denied to those of us who will subsequently look at his regulations.

If it is good enough for the Secretary of State to have the power, at the drop of a hat, to amend, revoke and repeal, then why is it not good enough for Parliament? But that, of course, is a silly question; I realise that. How naive can I be? Power is to remain in Whitehall, not to be given to town halls and certainly not to Parliament. The provision in Clause 38 illustrates the point exactly. The Bill is not handing out new powers to anyone; it simply hands out new regulations. Going through your Lordships’ House in parallel with this Bill is the retained EU law Bill. The starting point of that is that there is far too much regulation, red tape and bureaucracy, and we need to go through every Act and regulation that has been passed in the last 46 years and decide what to throw away. I think it is part of the two-out, one-in rule.

I suggest to the Government that the difficulties they face with that Bill would be substantially relieved if they were to produce a different Bill: the retention of local government law Bill, which would do exactly the same for local government as they are trying to do in respect of EU law.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her response, which I am not sure entirely clarifies the situation. What she seems to be saying is that the Bill introduces a new scheme whose outcome is so uncertain that we need an extra provision for it to be changed if it goes wrong. That is in light of what my noble friend has just said, which is that the four actual examples that exist at the moment have all performed below average. So, in that sense, her caution about having such a power is perhaps quite sound, but does that not rather indicate that the model itself should not go ahead in this form until the Government are satisfied that it will achieve the objectives of improved performance, or at least not deteriorating performance, before she proceeds?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

With the greatest respect to the noble Lord, I do not think we will not know exactly until we try it, but there will always be this power to say that, if those local people are not getting the service they require, the Secretary of State can revoke.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

I think I am right on this, although the noble Baroness might correct me. I got through the first 38 clauses and I think this was the first time I saw this particular revocation and amendment power being given to the Secretary of State. I believe that would have the effect of that amendment being made without any further reference to Parliament, other than through a set of regulations that we cannot amend—so its absence would simply mean that, should something need to be corrected, it would come back to Parliament. Is that interpretation correct?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

No, it is a power for the Secretary of State.

The amendment seeks to remove the power of the Secretary of State to make consequential amendments to such legislation. The effect would be that the Secretary of State could still apply police and crime commissioner legislation in relation to a combined county authority mayor or chief constable but could not make any necessary consequential amendments to reflect a change of circumstances. This limitation is undesirable and would result in flawed and inconsistent legislation in this area.

Finally, I will address the issues raised by the noble Baroness on Clause 38. This clause allows the Secretary of State to make regulations applying legislation that relates to a police and crime commissioner to a combined county authority mayor or a chief constable where the combined county authority mayor has adopted the single-employer model. Removing the clause would hinder the effective full implementation of the single-employer model because it would mean that the Secretary of State could not make further regulations applying local policing enactments or new corresponding provisions in relation to mayors of combined county authorities who have implemented the model.

I hope that my explanation will reassure the noble Baroness and the noble Lord of the importance of this group of clauses to the effective conferral of fire and rescue functions on combined county authority mayors, specifically on those opting to use the single-employer model to exercise these functions, and will therefore enable her to withdraw her opposition to them standing part of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I shall briefly respond to the cogent arguments made by the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Mann. They made me almost sentimental for our time in the other place and I was taken back to the comments and speeches there from the noble Lord, Lord Mann.

Although, superficially, I can see the merit of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, he does not take the concept of subsidiarity into account. This is what district councils are best at doing and it is at the lower level, although the functions are important. The purpose of the Bill is to leverage funding for strategic economic benefit. It is about inward investment, strategic transport and returns to scale from, for instance, police forces and fire services working together. It is not about diminishing the role, heritage and historical legacy of district councils.

My own area, Peterborough, in 1968 was a small, semi-rural, cathedral market town. No one imagined that it was ready to become a new town and have the significant growth that it saw between then, when it was designated a new town, and the 1990s. There was massive residential housing growth, big industries coming and the expansion of Perkins Engines, Thomas Cook, et cetera. My point is that, when it was a small district council, Peterborough could not have brought that economic powerhouse and growth itself; it had to work with other agencies and the Peterborough Development Corporation.

I am not arguing for a reconfiguration of development corporations, although the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, knows a lot about how they benefited Stevenage. My point is that you have to work with these larger bodies, which are below national but above small district council level. Take another example from the county of Suffolk. Local authorities, such as St Edmundsbury and Forest Heath were tiny; they could not deliver the core functions, in a globalised world, to bring jobs, opportunities, apprenticeships and new businesses to their areas. That is the point of this legislation; it is not about diminishing the role of district councils, but about helping them better fulfil their roles and responsibilities.

I can imagine the noble Lord, Lord Mann, becoming the mayor of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. I cannot think of a better candidate and am sure he would stand a good chance.

Oxford is a slightly strange example because it is, in effect, a world city. Three or four of our universities are in the world top 10, and Oxford is at the very heart of the success story of British academic repute. So Oxford is not a good example, but it obviously functions as a very important part of the greater Thames Valley, as an area of economic regeneration.

Having been a local councillor for eight years, albeit for a London borough, my heart is with the points of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, but I think that the Government’s endeavours go in the right direction. Only if we can think big, work together and collaborate can we generate the economic activity, jobs and skills that will, eventually, we hope, regenerate local government and complement central government.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, it has been an interesting debate and I am grateful for noble Lords’ contributions. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, made very clear the key part that district councils play, in particular in local communities but also in the bigger architecture of local government outside the big cities. It is an argument that the noble Lord and these Benches have advanced before and we support it.

I like the noble Lord’s amendment, of course, but I want to move on to what the noble Lord, Lord Mann, had to say. He was, I think, claiming credit for neighbourhood plans. I am delighted to hear that, because I usually claim credit for them and I know a number of Conservatives who always claim credit for them as well. They have been remarkably successful and have done just what they said on the tin. I have a tip for the Government; it is one that I keep making but they keep forgetting. Neighbourhood plans have been so successful that they have designated more housing sites than the local plans that they supersede in their areas. Rather than some of the gimmicks that flow through Whitehall and get into Acts of Parliament, neighbourhood plans have actually done the job and filled the gaps. I hope that that point will be registered strongly.

The noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, made a sound point about economic development. It is clearly very important, but that brings me to my criticism of the Government’s intentions as far as it is concerned. Economic development is one of the core functions of district councils. If they are not going to be seen as an important component in delivering it, something has been missed out of the system. Clause 86(2) says that

“regard is to be had to … the development plan, and … any national development management policies.”

It would make an alteration to a preceding Act; the addition is

“any national development management policies.”

My point is that the development plan is there. If you want development, it is going to be in the development plan. Who is responsible for that? It is the district council.

We have a situation where the development plan is in the gift of the local planning authority, which is the district council in two-tier areas. The district council has statutory responsibility for housing, economic planning and, for that matter, the location of social infrastructure such as clinics, schools, colleges and so on. They are in fact integral to delivering levelling up. I cannot understand—I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us this—what the architecture is for the delivery of the national development management plans, which, as far as Clause 86 is concerned, clearly sit bang alongside the local plans of the district council.

On the face of it, the CCAs are completely bypassed. They do not have a role in deciding what the national plan is, nor in deciding what the local plan is. The connection is straight between the local planning authorities and district councils, not CCAs, when it comes to those planning decisions.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

Would not the noble Lord concede that a large number of functions at the district council level, such as environmental health and planning, are delivered through the collaboration of district councils together for the reason that individual district councils do not have the resources in staffing or money to deliver them on their own? Therefore, a complex district plan being delivered by just one local authority may have been the case in the past but is not necessarily happening at the moment.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

One part of what the noble Lord says is certainly true, because a lot of local plans are not happening at the moment. All I say is that the Bill restates that development plans are a key lever, together with national development management plans. Those are in the custodianship of district councils, albeit that they may well work alongside other district councils or, for that matter, in combination with the county. I am simply making the point that the legal architecture in Clause 86 links district councils’ local plans to the national development plans, while the CCAs are not in the picture. Clearly, CCAs are intended to be the absolute economic driver for levelling up; that point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Jackson. It seems odd that the principal vehicle at the local level for setting that scene—the development plan—will be outside the grip of the CCAs, for better or worse, and that the people who do the district plans will be outside the CCAs. There is a disconnect there that, frankly, disables the whole process. There I am completely with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. Surely they should be at the heart of the process and, by the logic of that, should have the capacity to at least put forward a proposal, which would still be subject to the Secretary of State’s decision about how it might develop.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I will make a brief contribution because tonight, in East Suffolk Council, where I now have the great privilege of living, there is to be a debate on the very subject of democracy at local government level. I have just received a copy of the speech that will be given by David Beavan, the councillor for Southwold ward. He will say—he has not yet said it—the following:

“The Conservative party won the last election with 38% of the vote, but this gave them an overwhelming majority with 71% of the councillors. We are not allowed to debate the unfair first past the post system but we can debate ways to mitigate it so that the silent majority of non-Conservative voters are represented … This administration used its majority as a sledge hammer to close down debate in this council and to pack every committee and outside body with their own … We believe there is a better way to run this council … Where all members of every party have an opportunity to work for East Suffolk … Where debate is open and considered not predetermined by a party political whip … Where opposition members are given a fair chance to make their point in meetings … Where officers are not dragged into petty party politics … Above all we need a Scrutiny committee that is not directed by the administration. An opposition chair would ensure this independence … East Suffolk today faces big challenges. We need to work together as a community and a council. We should set aside party politics after the election and knuckle down to govern fairly for all of East Suffolk.”


I entirely agree with him, and I note that in an earlier discussion on Monday the noble Earl the Minister said clearly that this Bill is all about getting rid of “central diktat” and giving local people an opportunity to have a say. This amendment from my noble friend gives an opportunity to do that. I hope it will be supported by the Government.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, we have had a short debate and it will be very interesting to see how the Government respond to it. I wait in hope that something can be done, as my noble friend said in moving this amendment, to turbocharge local democracy. There is no doubt that it needs turbocharging: we see elements of its alienation every day of the week. We are moving closer and closer not to better local democracy, but to perhaps better but certainly more intense local administration. I have spoken on that already today. My noble friend made the extremely powerful point, and certainly a very good debating point, that if ID cards are good enough for Northern Ireland, surely a proportional voting system is good enough for England. I hope the Government have a really plausible reason for not accepting that argument.

My noble friend Lady Harris has accurately reported, I am sure, the views of Richmondshire District Council—incidentally, it is in North Yorkshire, which we were of course discussing earlier today—and the value of every vote being equal and the opportunities for regeneration that flow from that. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, drew our attention to some examples of bad practice and pointed out the damaging impacts of single-party rule. Since we certainly think it is inappropriate, to say the least, in North Korea, it ought to be inappropriate in our town halls in England as well. Restoring that element of local choice and broader representation ought surely to be one of the objectives of this levelling-up Bill.

My noble friend Lord Foster of Bath drew attention to the not untypical situation with East Suffolk Council whereby a party with less than 40% of the vote finishes up with over 70% of the representation and therefore of the decision-making. We had debates earlier about the Government’s intention, set out clearly in the Bill, to suspend the operation of proportionality in local authorities in the formation of CCAs. I hope the Government Front Bench will take note of some of the malign consequences that can arise when proportionality is not adhered to. Of course, in terms of representation, a sense of alienation can grow in voters, and in non-voters but electors, who repeatedly say, “It’s not worth voting because they always get in”. That happens time and again, particularly in local government. Surely, we have to make sure that the voices of the silent ones—the voices being suppressed by that system—are in fact heard.

I want to hear the Government say, “There are things about this we do not like; we do not really want anything other than first past the post; but we do recognise that local communities, local councils, should have the right to choose for themselves the voting system they use”. My noble friend has set out in considerable detail a very compelling case: we are not suggesting throwing the whole system up in the air, but simply using systems already in operation in various parts of the United Kingdom, including in England.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Harris, Lady Pinnock and Lady Bennett, and the noble Lords, Lord Foster and Lord Stunell. It has been a very interesting discussion. The arguments I have heard articulated many times over the years on voting methods have been rehearsed with great conviction this afternoon.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 15th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I am certainly ready to respond on behalf of my Front-Bench colleague on this group, but I notice that there are two further items that it might be appropriate for me to allow the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, to address before I speak.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

We have one amendment and a stand part notice in this group. One is on whether Clause 92 should stand part of the Bill, and the other is an amendment as to whether the Crown should publish a review on whether the provisions of the Act should be extended.

Clause 92 is on the neighbourhood development plans and orders, and the basic conditions that are referred to. We have put this down because we wanted to draw attention to what we considered to be a fundamental issue with neighbourhood plans. As things stand at the moment, it is not entirely clear to us what role they play in national planning policy. We know that they are explicitly addressed in the National Planning Policy Framework, but this is only in terms of process. The way it is done is not particularly clear. On the one hand, the stated rationale of neighbourhood plans is that they give communities the power to develop a shared vision for their area, and they are legally part of development plans. On the other hand, they have to conform to local planning housing allocations, if they are still going to exist, and have regard to national planning policy, but can also be overturned when they are in conflict with either of these things. That brings about a tension and, ultimately, the question of who makes decisions here. Is it communities or is it Ministers? This is not really resolved or clear at all. It would be helpful for the Minister to bring some clarity around that. We need clarity about the precise remit of neighbourhood plans.

More fundamentally, we also need a better sense of the function of neighbourhood planning within the wider planning system. It is critical that there is a balance between local and national planning, because we do not want to see communities disempowered and more control at the centre. I know that the Government have talked a lot about how the Bill is devolving power from the centre locally, but we feel that in many areas this is not actually what the Bill is achieving. We need to make sure that we do not lose the ability of communities to have a say in their own destinies and what their communities are going to look like. If you think about the last 10 years of Conservative Administrations, the Government have been tinkering away with the planning systems; we believe that has, to a certain extent, undermined the scope for effective local and neighbourhood planning. The Bill is an opportunity to put that right. As it stands at the moment, we think that in certain areas it does the opposite. It is about making sure that the Bill does level up, does give more power to communities and does not snatch any more back to the centre.

I give just one example of why we are particularly worried about this. The new national development management policies that the Bill provides for will take precedence over both local and neighbourhood plans where there is any kind of conflict. When the Minister responds, it would be good to hear that she appreciates the concerns I have just expressed and for her to give us confidence that the Bill will not undermine any kind of localism in the planning system. On the clauses that we are concerned about, such as Clause 92 and later when we get to the NDMPs, it would be good to hear that there will be more consideration of the impact on local decision-making.

Amendment 506 in the name of my noble friend Lady Taylor of Stevenage concerns

“whether the provisions of this act should be extended in relation to parish councils and town councils in England, and community councils in Wales and Scotland.”

We have had a pretty big debate about parish and town councils so I will not go into any detail on them now; I think the Minister has a fairly clear idea of why we are saying this. I do not think the Bill goes far enough to empower and involve communities in the devolution proposals that we have been debating.

I will speak briefly on some of the other amendments introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market. Again, many of them are really important. I particularly want to say how much we support Amendment 160—as the noble Baroness said, this feeds back to our previous debate—on the dependant carers’ allowance for parish councillors. This is important. I do not understand why parish councils could not have been added to the list of local authorities in England that can have a scheme to provide for the payment to members if they have caring responsibilities. It could help with the expense of arranging childcare, for example, or of having someone come in to sit with an elderly relative while the carer attends a meeting. It seems a sensible, practical way of supporting councillors who have caring duties to take a greater role and encouraging people with caring responsibilities to take part in their local communities.

I also think that the noble Baroness’s Amendment 161, on neighbourhood governance, is something that we need to look at. It makes absolute sense for the Secretary of State to have to

“undertake a review of neighbourhood governance in England.”

Again, in looking at levelling up, that is about empowering communities; it is all part of the same picture, as far as I can see. The noble Baroness referred to the 2017 Taylor review. As she said, it confirmed that there is considerable confusion about what Section 8 of the 1894 Act actually means; again, we will come on to churches and what it means for them. Whether you agree with it or not, this is about updating legislation so that everybody better understands what it means. At the moment, better clarification is needed. One of the points that has been made on this by the National Association of Local Councils is that there is no current case law to resolve the question of whether that Act in fact overrides these provisions. To me, it just makes sense to have a review as it is a very old piece of legislation.

We very much support the noble Baroness’s Amendment 164 on the general power of competence. Communities need power and influence to tackle the issues that matter most to local people, allowing them to shape the delivery of public services in their area and, ultimately, to deliver the kind of community in which they want to live and be part of. Again, we think that it is an important amendment.

My noble friend Lord Blunkett said, quite rightly, that this group of amendments is important for how local democracy is supported and developed as we go forward. I hope that the Minister and the Government will look kindly on the amendments, the spirit of what they are trying to achieve and the support they are trying to give local communities and parish councils. If you are genuine about levelling up, these sorts of amendments can actually make quite a big difference in their own way. I hope that she will have time to take this back to her department to look at in more detail.

Finally, it was very good to learn that my noble friend Lord Blunkett has recognised the error of his ways in making things more centralised, and I hope that the Government will learn from his approach.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I too welcome the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, to the community of the saved. The amendments on parish councils find favour with our Front Bench. I will not go into great detail on them. I hope that, if we are quick on this group of amendments, the Government will give us a break afterwards.

On the standards proposed by Amendment 159, I say that I was a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life when we carried out our inquiry on the state of the health of democracy in local councils. There was a quite clear gap, and our recommendations were very clear about what should be done. It is disappointing that the Government, initially at least, responded that they were not going to take any action. I hope that they will now take some action, not least because of the high-profile cases which came to light during the pandemic lockdown.

We support Amendments 160 and 161; the review of parishes is certainly well overdue. The capacity of parishes to do things was much tested during Covid. Most parishes proved up to the task, but the government system of emergency funding was denied to them; had it been available, it would have been helpful to their communities. I would have thought that the Government might want to have this reserve power in their pocket for a future occasion, even if they are convinced that they do not need to apply it immediately.

I did not know how controversial grants by parish councils would prove to be in the debate. I just add that the Church of England is not the only religious body in England, and certainly not the only religious body which supplies and helps its community and which parishes might well want to support and enable. I am quite sure that we need to get past this particular roadblock and just make parishes able to take their own decision about whether a particular body and a particular cause does or does not justify the use of taxpayers’ and parish money to carry out duties of one sort or another. The power of general competence is of course part of capacity raising, all of which is about levelling up by making parish councils effective voices in their community and enabling them to do things; it is empowerment.

The Government have focused on things which some of us think are completely misplaced or very trivial—the subject of street names springs to my mind. However, on things which are much more important and significant, they seem to have been a little blind, so I hope that they will respond to the debate in a very positive way.

On the question of Clause 92 standing part of the Bill, I hope that I do not understand the clause properly, because it seems to say that neighbourhood plans will be fine from now on, but only as long as they reach a minimum standard set by the Government in terms of housing supply.

I said in an earlier debate that neighbourhood plans had been remarkably successful in allocating more land for housing than the local plans that they superseded, on average. Obviously, of the roughly 3,000 that have been approved, not every one has provided more housing—some have provided less—but, on average, they have provided more. They are a vehicle for overcoming the terrible tension in a planning system in which the developer develops and the community opposes. They were designed to turn it around, so that the community proposes and the developer develops. That is how you get more homes; if you try to bulldoze it through the community, at whatever level, you will slow the process down. Neighbourhood planning has shown that you can speed it up and get more homes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her explanation. It is certainly helpful as far as the first parts of Clause 92 are concerned, but new paragraph (ea) is precisely the point I was raising: it requires a neighbourhood plan not to reduce housing allocation compared to the local plan, which is the current context. Bearing in mind that quite a few neighbourhood plans are being made in areas that do not have local plans, that raises another question, which we will park for the moment. If you put that floor at the level at which neighbourhood plans have to perform—in other words, you want everything to be above average compared to what we have now—does the noble Baroness not see that it undermines the flexibility that is the strength of neighbourhood plans?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

No, I do not. One of the main issues that this or any Government will face is building houses, and allowing a neighbourhood plan to deliver fewer houses than a local plan is not acceptable.

On Amendment 506, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, the Government recognise the important role that parish councils play in improving the quality of life and well-being of their communities, which are at the heart of the Government’s six drivers of levelling up. The Government believe that the current provisions are adequate in addressing issues faced by the sector. These provisions provide tools and flexibilities to allow town and parish councils in England to adapt to local needs and circumstances. In Scotland and Wales, the devolved Governments also already have the tools to conduct a review of the provisions in this Bill and to make changes in relation to community councils. Noble Lords will agree that it is important for local people and community groups to come together to set local priorities and directions. I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.