Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Freeman of Steventon Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 27th October 2025 Lords Chamber

Finally, I appreciate that my amendment may contain all kinds of drafting and other shortcomings. I am relaxed about any possible criticism of that, but I firmly believe in the underlying argument as part of the core of what the Bill should be about. I very much hope the Minister can confirm this and give comfort to all the volunteers who are making such an important contribution in the wider public interest to the physical future of England and Wales. I beg to move.

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak specifically to Amendment 84, to which I have added my name, although I support many of the amendments in this group.

We know how important public green spaces are to communities, and for nature, and that there is widespread public support for their protection. That is why, as I understand it, registered parks and gardens, along with battlefields, were given protection in the town and country planning order 2015. I thank the Gardens Trust for its briefings on this, and the Minister and her office for a helpful meeting and correspondence about it.

At the moment, as my noble friend Lord Inglewood has said, registered parks and gardens are not considered statutory heritage assets, which would make them part of the same process as listed buildings. Instead, they have their own process of consultation, with Historic England as the statutory consultee for battlefields and grade 1 and grade 2* parks and gardens, and the Gardens Trust dealing with grade 2 parks and gardens, which is 65% of them. Importantly, three-quarters of registered public parks are grade 2, so the Gardens Trust is tasked with looking after most of our public parks.

The Gardens Trust appears to do this very efficiently. From its statistics, we see that it was consulted 1,842 times last year, and that 99% of the time it responded within the agreed deadline. It voiced an objection to planning in only 6.6% of its responses. Its government grant for fulfilling this consultee role—for giving bespoke responses to planning inquiries, on time and with expertise—was £43,963.

Clearly, there is no way that anyone else within the planning system could deliver this expertise for less money and with any greater time efficiency, and there is no evidence that it is causing a major blockage to housebuilding. Actually, not having heard of the Gardens Trust before this matter arose, I thank the charity for its service to this country and its public parks.

I understand that the Government are considering removing the Gardens Trust’s statutory consultee role—the slightly bespoke role that was created for registered parks, gardens and battlefields. We all, however, appreciate the work that it does, so this amendment aims to protect this service while making the administrative process simpler. It would put registered parks and gardens into the same planning process as other heritage assets, where there is an existing and well-understood statutory consent process, whereby the Gardens Trust would be the amenity society that would be notified if there were planning proposals that might affect registered parks and gardens, or, importantly, their settings.

The noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, has Amendment 109 coming up, which I believe would have a similar effect by commencing Section 102 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, in which this area of planning was already tidied up. That might be an alternative to this amendment. None the less, it would be very helpful if the Minister, in her response to this group, could indicate the Government’s intentions on making best use of the efficient role that the Gardens Trust plays in helping give advice on our much-loved grade 2 parks and gardens and their settings.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 107 in this group—I appreciate that I am jumping a little down the line.

I tabled the amendment because, at the moment, we are removing consultation from the planning process—or removing as much of it as possible—for the sake of efficiency. Sports fields are the most attractive things for a planner to see: a piece of reasonably flat and well-drained land. What better to put a house on? If we are to lose our sports fields, we will lose an asset that keeps on giving.

I thank both Ministers on the Front Bench for meeting me privately to try to convince me that I did not have much to worry about—but for all their courtesy and time, I have failed to be convinced. As I said, it is just so tempting for local authorities—or for anyone else involved—to say, “Let’s put a house on this sports field”. Some are, of course, owned by councils or schools, and schools can get rid of them as they have more independence now.

Can we protect sports fields? If we do not have somewhere to play a sport, that sport dies or becomes unavailable to a particular group. If some sports clubs own their own pitches, they may not own enough space to have a second or a third team. If you get rid of your second or third team, the first team is under threat and thus the existence of the entire club. It is that simple. There is that much pressure. If they do not get people involved every week, those people will do something else—they will leave—and we will lose this asset.

Community sport is one of the best community builders, because members are involved not just in exercise but in a community of its own that feeds into other communities. Let us remember that people who want to make sure that they can play the game will sit on committees and take on the legal responsibility of being a secretary or a treasurer for these groups. Everybody who has run a political party will know that people are just dying to do these roles all the time—are they not? Everybody really wants to have the legal responsibilities and the bank accounts—do they not? People do this willingly—well, they do it—to make sure they can get out there and play the game. These sports facilities allow that to happen. If we take away the defence of sports fields, which allow such a key activity, we will put that under threat.

Not every sports field will disappear overnight but some will—they will be moved and they will not be replaced. My amendment suggests that, if we go ahead with this, something must be put in its place. That is not too much to ask. I would like to vote on the amendment, unless the Government provide some great revelation, in which case I shall say, “Hallelujah!” and sit down.

In this country, these community activities are largely conducted without much government intervention. Private groups get involved and bring their own time and often money, but they need to be supported to allow these activities to take place. I suggest that my amendment—or at least something like it—would not be too much to ensure that something as important as community, grass-roots sports have their pitches defended, to give them a chance to continue to function as they currently do.