Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Coffey]

62A: Clause 51, page 67, line 29, at end insert—
“(2A) The regulations must not allow an officer of the authority to approve any planning application which—(a) allows building or development outside the boundaries set out in the local plan, or(b) has a housing density for the area that is below the level prescribed in the local plan.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to prevent officers to whom decisions have been delegated from approving planning applications which would (1) require land outside of the boundary of a local plan, or (2) build at a lower density of housing than prescribed within a local plan.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group. We are at the stage now where we are considering the Government’s significant changes—basically, removing decision-making from councillors on a huge scale, which gives me cause for concern—but I have decided to highlight just a couple of issues.

I shall start with Amendment 87F, which goes to the nub of one of these issues. The Government seem to be proposing, in Part 3, that councillors no longer make decisions and that they be handed over to officials, who are obviously not locally elected. Amendment 87F would require the reporting of planning permission that has been granted but not actually commenced. We already have plenty of homes that have planning approval right around the country, never mind the 700,000 homes that are currently sitting empty. I do not necessarily mean second homes; I am talking about other homes that are sitting there doing nothing. This is important to me when I think of communities around the country that have had huge housing targets imposed on them, when actually, the worst situation is in London, where, sadly, hardly any homes are being built at all. Instead, to be candid, we are seeing this rather Stalinist approach. Amendment 87F is intended to encourage the Government to make sure that at least we have some transparency on what is happening with all the homes for which development permission is being granted, but which are not being built.

Amendment 62A deals with what happens when officials talk about planning applications that do not fit within the boundaries of the plan. We have been told at various stages of the Bill that the real democratic process is in the initial creation of the plan. My experience of various places I have lived in is that communities rarely get involved—councillors do, of course, but there is a lot of consultation—until there is a particular development in their area. Nevertheless, even if the focus will now be put on consideration of where housing can happen—with, we hope, little further argument once that is done—officers should not then be allowed to approve planning applications that sit outside the plan.

The second issue is something I have seen in the Felixstowe area in particular. Land has been set aside for 2,000 new homes on the edge of Felixstowe, but we are already starting to see officers questioning the housing density being proposed, and making recommendations in line with other policies. If the same principle was applied to every single planning application, instead of the land that has been set aside, which is already substantial at a housing density of about 150 per acre or per hectare—I apologise; I cannot remember which—the implication is that three times the amount of land would be needed. That is a huge extension of what communities that have been encouraged to get involved in plans thought they were getting when they signed up to this.

That is why I believe that if councillors want to go beyond the boundaries set out in the local plan and change the density, they should be the ones making that decision, not officers. I am conscious that at this stage, we have not seen any draft regulations or proposals from the Government, and those would be helpful. But my intention today is to press again to make sure that, as and when the regulations come forward—of course, we do not have an opportunity to amend regulations —this issue is covered.

I fully endorse Amendment 63 in the name of my noble friend Lord Lansley. It makes a lot of sense that this House and the other House at least consider the proposals that are going to be put forward, which will determine the sorts of issues I have just mentioned. I also support Amendment 76 in the names of my noble friends on the Front Bench. Again, it seems quite straightforward that if there are valid planning reasons why something should be turned down, the elected councillors should get to say that.

This is a huge change that is coming and we need to make sure that there are safeguards for communities, so that when they vote for their local council, or in the future for their mayor, they have some assurance that these will actually have some powers rather than this being dictated from Whitehall, which has not always proved to be the best way to achieve housing in the past. With that, I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I can only repeat that, on the powers on which we consulted in the working paper, we want to look at the responses and then implement them.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister and all noble Lords who have contributed on this group. It has been a useful discussion.

I say candidly to the Minister that these are the powers of transparency that, if I had served as a Minister in her department, I would have wanted to know of, so that I could go after those developers, hold their feet to the fire and enact what my noble friend has just said from LURA 2023. However, with that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 62A withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 64 relates to a subject that we did not discuss in Committee. It was tabled only at the beginning of last week. Although the Minister said there was just an anomaly, as though it was some sort of gap, I have to confess that, when I looked at it, I found it quite difficult to work out what this gap was. Under the existing powers, if the Secretary of State sees that a local authority is not intending to grant planning permission but wishes that planning permission to be granted, they can issue a direction for that purpose. If the Secretary of State sees that a local planning authority is likely to refuse a planning application, leaving aside the fact that the applicant might choose to appeal such a refusal, the Secretary of State could, if they sought to move quickly, make a direction for the purpose of granting planning permission, or simply call it in, which I would have thought would be the obvious thing to do.

The purpose of my amendment is to test the use case a bit. What worries me is that, on the face of it, the ostensible purpose here might be to give the Secretary of State much clearer power to issue a direction to stop a local authority refusing planning permission for an application that is not in accordance with the development plan. Clearly, the Secretary of State already has the power to grant planning permission not in accordance with the development plan. That is in Section 74, in a later subsection. The Secretary of State can still do that, but it looks to me as if what this actually adds is the ability to stop local authorities refusing permission in circumstances where an application is not in accordance with the development plan. We have spent a lot of time, especially those of us who remember the debates on the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, emphasising the importance of local authorities having up-to-date local plans and that decisions should be made in accordance with those plans.

My Amendment 65, as an amendment to Amendment 64, would add into Section 74 of the Town and Country Planning Act a specific provision that the Secretary of State may issue directions in effect to grant planning permission or to refuse planning permission in accordance with the development plan. That seems to me to be the best way of guaranteeing democratic input into planning and, indeed, that the delivery of planning happens in ways that are relatively predictable and successful from the point of view of local communities. I commend Amendment 65 as an alternative approach, but, in the absence of Amendment 65, it seems to me that Amendment 64 adds risk to the system rather than substantial benefit. I beg to move Amendment 65.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I have tabled Amendments 87A and 87D in this group. Amendment 87D is a bit of an outlier, so I will come to that later in my contribution. In essence, Amendment 87A is supposed to be a bit of a helping hand to the Government in achieving the outcome that they are intending, whereas the Government’s Amendment 64 really is a huge overreach. I should start by thanking Alexa Culver for helping draft Amendment 87A.

Government Amendment 64 would allow the Secretary of State, in effect, to force through planning permissions, even when material considerations such as failing EDPs, water shortages and insufficient infrastructure would normally warrant planning refusal. In the press release that was put out, although it did not directly mention the amendment, the closest explanation that could be found was:

“Ministers will be able to issue ‘holding directions’ to stop councils refusing planning permission whilst they consider using their ‘call-in’ powers. Under existing rules, they can only issue these holds when councils are set to approve applications”.


The suggestion is that this amendment would allow the Government properly to use their call-in powers.

It is possible that this explanation is a red herring and does not match the much broader powers contained in Amendment 64. At the moment, Written Ministerial Statements can govern the procedure for call-in; there is no need for legislation to improve or refine the process. I have suggested an alternative to the Government through Amendment 87A. Planning authorities are allowed to refuse planning permission only when there are justified grounds to do so. If that refusal is appealed, of course, the Secretary of State can call in that appeal, known as recovering the appeal. Therefore, the Government’s stated concern around obstructive or hair-trigger refusal is a fairly minor one to legislate for.

The challenge here is that we need to try to make sure that we improve other parts of the Bill. To give a bit more detail, the clause would permit the Secretary of State to pass a new type of development order that prevents local planning authorities refusing to grant planning permission, for example where there is insufficient water supply or the like. Up until now, development orders have been used only to govern or constrain how planning authorities positively grant consent. This amendment turns that around for the first time and allows the Secretary of State to prevent refusals of planning permission.

Development orders have to be made by statutory instrument—although I believe it is through the negative procedure—but there are no obvious constraints on how the power can be used. The bars to refusal can be used to override local, real-world, on-the-ground constraints to development, and planning authorities may be forced to consent, for example, where EDPs are failing or unimplemented.

On the speed of impact, there are widely publicised water shortage issues in many parts of the country and I am very concerned that, given that this clause is expected to come into force on the day, we could see a flurry of directions being issued. Amendment 87A—by the good help of Alexa Culver, as I say—would not have entire overreach but would potentially help the Minister achieve their aim.

Amendment 87D is on something very close to my heart: considering local communities. They go to a lot of effort to register assets of community value, but at the moment the regulations are such that there are very few examples of buildings being protected from demolition under existing permitted development rights. Those are a pub and, I think, two other examples of some social issues. I think a theatre is a good example. I have seen this at first hand when a community came together. Registering an asset of community value is not the most straightforward of processes, but they did. When the owner of said community assets was starting to get fed up, they literally just pulled the buildings down, not even allowing the local community the chance to buy those assets from the developer.

I am conscious that the Government will have legislation later this year about local communities. I really do not want to have to return at that stage to press the case; I want to get these changes made now. When we bring in legislation to empower communities, which happened in the Localism Act and which I know the Government say they support, let us not continue to have legislation where the rug can be pulled away from those local communities. In the particular case it was a sports centre and a theatre, both much cherished and both used in marketing for housebuilding in that area and as reasons for people to move there. We are talking about all these new communities. Unfortunately, those things could be built and within a day they could be pulled down to make space for more houses—exactly what happened in that community in Suffolk. It may be the only example. I have not investigated right around the country, but I feel so strongly about it and this Bill has been my first opportunity to try to rectify what I genuinely believe is a wrong. I hope that the House will support that later tonight.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I rise briefly in support of the outlier Amendment 87D from the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey. I have Amendment 102, likely to be heard on Monday, which seeks to extend the current assets of community value scheme to include cultural assets, so I have a particular interest in how the scheme as it stands at present does and should work.

The noble Baroness’s amendment and mine were considered in the same group in Committee; she pointed out that, as she said just now, some if not all cultural buildings had already been added to the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015. This has been a move in the right direction, but I certainly agree that assets of community value should be added. Strangely, we have a situation where, through the 2015 order, certain cultural venues such as concert halls and theatres are protected but community assets as such are not, which feels incredibly inconsistent, certainly in relation to the community asset scheme as it stands now.

I find what the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, has described today, and in considerable detail in Committee —about how a new owner can ride roughshod over a community—not just wrong but, frankly, outrageous. Legislation is not always the right thing, as the Minister points out quite a lot, but I think this is a perfect instance of where a gap in the law ought to be plugged and ought to be addressed in the community’s interest. I will certainly vote for Amendment 87D if the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, takes it to a vote.