Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Grender Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I am gravely concerned. Normally, of course, I agree wholeheartedly with my noble friend Lady Coffey, and perhaps I have misread her amendment, in which case I apologise, and she will correct me in the winding. In the evidence that the chief executive of Natural England gave to your Lordships’ Built Environment Committee 18 months ago, she said that it had no regard whatever for economic growth in determining its position on development proposals; it was purely, solely and entirely for environmental purposes. Of course, if growth is the principal and number one objective of this Government, these things need to be balanced. So the amendment puts a touching faith in the professionalism of Natural England, which, as I think we will discover next week, may be misplaced.

Natural England, in its provision of EDPs, as I read in the Bill, will be given monopoly powers to be a monopoly regulator, a monopoly provider and a monopoly price-maker of environmental schemes in this country. These EDPs, as I see it, could conceptually be 100 different EDPs on a national basis for 100 different species, each of which may be in a less favourable condition, or so forth.

If the experience of nutrient neutrality is anything to go by, it will take Natural England years to come up with mitigating programmes. That is what it has done, and in some parts of the country we are still waiting. So I have no faith that Natural England, vested as it will be in Part 3 of the Bill, will be prompt and complete in its provision of EDPs.

As I read this amendment, I see that it will be an excuse for local authorities not to grant an otherwise appropriate permission, which would in normal cases sail through because every other obligation and stipulation has been met. So I think we can contemplate that this could not only gum up and slow down the development, but there is a second problem. The risk is that the developer may have made his own inquiries and found his own local solution to a particular local requirement for an especially local problem, whether for species, environmental ecology, or whatever. I can see that the consequence of this amendment would be that he might have to pay three times: once for the delay, once for his own mitigation, which in so far as he or any reasonable person is concerned meets all the regulations, and another time to wait for the EDP, which may or may not be coming from Natural England in a prompt situation.

I am really concerned about this amendment. I do not believe that Natural England is the appropriate body to do this. If the Government take a different view, that is their prerogative. But we should not vest in Natural England monopoly powers that cut out private provision, private delivery, and especially local delivery, and sacrifice them on the altar of some national scheme at hugely inflated values.

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, for ensuring that one person is watching tonight—it is much appreciated—and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for raising interesting debates regarding Amendments 135A, 135F and 253A in the context of biodiversity protections through environmental delivery plans, or EDPs, and the capture and use of that data.

EDPs must do more than simply mitigate harm. They must require the active protection and enhancement of biodiversity, with clear enforceable timetables and measurable outcomes. Our concern is that EDPs risk becoming instruments of offsetting impact rather than delivering real local environmental recovery. We need a strong legal framework that prevents development-related damage to irreplaceable habitats, such as ancient woodlands and chalk streams, and makes sure these habitats receive the highest protection in planning decisions.

We welcome these amendments and look forward to some level of timetabling and monitoring in EDPs and the introduction of an overall improvement test seeking to ensure that conservation gains significantly outweigh harm. However, for us, questions remain about whether the provisions are sufficient in practice to guarantee meaningful biodiversity outcomes. The reliance on compensation rather than upfront prevention remains a concern, as does the limited timeframe for public scrutiny of EDPs. We all in this Committee note that Part 3 includes new measures on EDPs, including, as discussed, powers for Natural England to oversee and design conservation strategies, but it is still unclear how these changes will translate into on the ground improvements or prevent the loss of vulnerable habitats.

The hour is late, but it would be useful if the Minister could tell us to what extent these recent changes to Part 3 address the deep concerns about EDPs being used as a compromise rather than a solution. Will we see stronger enforcement, longer public consultations and better integration of biodiversity data into our planning decisions?

EDPs that guarantee biodiversity need to ensure that our natural heritage is a foundation, not a casualty, of sustainable development. I welcome this debate, therefore, and look forward to clarification—if not tonight then certainly when we debate Part 3 next week—to ensure that the Bill delivers the nature protections that we all believe this country urgently needs.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, it seems to me that we are getting ahead of ourselves. We are yet to reach Part 3, but these seem to be mostly considerations relating to the content of Part 3 and how the environmental delivery plans and the nature restoration levy are intended to work.

I understood my noble friend Lady Coffey’s amendment to be grouped where it is and say what it does because nowhere in Part 3 is there something that otherwise tells us how the making of an environmental delivery plan affects a local planning authority in making its decisions. It seemed to me that she had tabled a rather useful amendment that did precisely that.

I do not think it is relevant whether a developer has to pay the levy or not. It can request to pay the levy, or, as we can see in Clause 66 and Schedule 4, Natural England can make it mandatory that it pays the levy. Either way, it does not really matter. The point is that, if the environmental delivery plan is made, a local authority should clearly take it into account in determining any planning permission, in the same way as it would be required to have regard to all the legislation relating to protected sites and protected species. Schedule 4 simply tells us that when the local authority makes planning decisions it may disregard them because there is an environmental delivery plan in place. What my noble friend Lady Coffey is saying would be at least a useful addition, in a technical sense, to the Bill.