Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Levitt Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 25th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

My Lords, some may wonder why I, a criminal barrister, have chosen to speak in a debate on planning and infrastructure. The reason is that I have a lifelong interest in housing, which derives at least in part from my observation of hundreds of criminal cases, including those I saw during the time I spent as a judge presiding over jury trials. In so many of those cases, one of the problems of defendants is that they have never enjoyed the advantage of a decent home, which should be a place of personal safety and stability. Unfortunately, it is a depressing truth that the most comfortable and secure place in which some people spend a significant proportion of their lives is a custodial institution, and the shortage of decent homes for poorer families has contributed to this.

Against this background, I want to congratulate the Government on this Bill. It is the most ambitious programme for housing since 1953. As a member of your Lordships’ House, I wish to contribute in an effort to help the Government achieve their objectives by ensuring that what is built will be remembered for its good qualities. The best of the great Victorian architects and builders produced houses that we still want to live in nearly 200 years later. I know that the Government are fully conscious that they should be building new homes for many generations of our citizens. We should be ambitious that, in 200 years, people will talk of this project as one of the finest in housing development in our history.

I do not think it is controversial to say that good housing is about far more than providing four walls and a ceiling. It includes what architects refer to as place- making; in other words, providing the qualities that turn a house into a home, a tenement into a community, and a community into a place which you can say that you are proud to come from. When this Labour Government build a new neighbourhood, we want people in 50 and 100 years to say that they are proud to come from, and want to live in, that neighbourhood.

This means building durable spaces and places—places where people remain in their old age, alongside the new generations growing up behind them. Providing these and other requirements in the same place is how strong communities are created. In addition—reverting to my criminal law theme—another benefit is that strong communities self-regulate. It is axiomatic that there is far less anti-social behaviour—far less graffiti, for example—in places in which people are proud to live.

Since large-scale council house building effectively ended in 1979, although architects have been involved in many projects and some have produced wonderful designs, the housebuilders have been the dominant partners. As the noble Lord, Lord Best, said in his powerful speech, this has led, certainly on occasion, to profit being a more important concept than community. But good design—the creation of the good place—should be at the beating heart of every development.

One of the first actions undertaken by a certain Director of Public Prosecutions—who may or may not now be the Prime Minister—was to publish a document on core quality standards, by which every prosecution could be judged and, most importantly, measured. Along with some noble friends and colleagues in your Lordships’ House, I am currently working with a group of architects and planners to draw up a list of just such core quality standards for new housing, which we will ask the Government to enshrine in policy and, if necessary, in the legislation.

We want to be sure that everyone involved in planning homes is expected to reach high standards of place-making and that these are integral to every scheme put forward. By way of example, one of the things that I think we would all like to ensure is that when housebuilders put together their applications, the word “child” appears more often than the word “car”. The Bill provides an opportunity to strengthen and clarify design requirements.

In the view of these professionals, it is not necessary to make radical changes to the current planning system in order to achieve improved quality outcomes. Rather, what is needed is to ensure that quality is embedded in all applications for new development. What is needed are clear, predictable and measurable design requirements; if these are met, this would enable planning officers to sign off significant components of planning applications. A consequence of that would be to reduce the number of areas which will then be subject to democratic debate and decision-making. Applications which demonstrate compliance with the standards could be processed speedily within the current system, and thus the promise of speedy approvals will provide an incentive for the housebuilders to incorporate these measurable standards in their applications.

In other words, if there are core quality standards in place, this should speed up delivery of the new homes which the Government have promised and are determined to deliver. The aim is to provide homes at scale and at pace which will give people better lives throughout their lives.