English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2026 Grand Committee

I anticipate what I hope the noble Lord, Lord Best, will be able to add in relation to Scotland, where such a statutory role has been implemented. Pam Ewen, the chief planner at Fife Council, said, “The role helps get planning and planners at the top table in local government”. She added, “The role has been positively received and implemented in Scotland. It has not raised issues; rather, it has positively highlighted the importance of planning”. I submit to the Minister that, if she wants to raise the role of planning, to put planning reform at the top table in local government and to see the planning reforms deliver—I am sure she does—a statutory chief planner role would be an instrument to enable those things to happen.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I warmly welcome back the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. Having broken my ankle before, I feel her pain. I will speak to Amendments 132 and 222B in this group and, if time permits, Amendment 241E in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman of Steventon.

The Minister will be aware of my interest in SUDS. What I am seeking to do here is align her department with Defra, because Defra is much keener than her department is on bringing in mandatory standards for sustainable drainage. I hope that we can bring them closer together so that they speak with one voice.

The importance of SUDS as a natural containment of water is twofold, but it is primarily to prevent flooding and to prevent floodwater from being displaced. For example, if as few as 30 or 60 houses have been built on a waterlogged field—it does not need to be a major development of 300 houses—it can displace the water into existing developments. I saw this when I was the MP for Filey, for my last five years in the other place. Flooding of sewage was caused when rainwater mixed with the additional sewage into the combined sewer. It went onto the highway, meant that households, including some pensioner households living in bungalows, had to be evicted for six months and caused £1 million of damage to Filey School.

I know that the noble Baroness will reply by saying that the Government published guidance in June 2025 and that SUDS is part of the National Planning Policy Framework, to which I would say, even more firmly than before, that these are, regrettably, not mandatory. Since my earlier attempts to put SUDS on a statutory basis during the passage of the levelling up Bill and the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, there has been a court case, which I will come on to now.

With this amendment, I am seeking to ask the noble Baroness to conduct sustainable drainage assessments relating to planning applications by strategic authorities, before those applications are approved. The assessment

“must include consideration of whether existing public sewerage systems have capacity to support proposed developments in planning applications.”

I refer to the excellent report by the Environmental Audit Committee in the other place, Flood Resilience in England, which was published last year. It makes two references to SUDS, one in particular. I quote its paragraph 48:

“We heard that the Flood Risk Management Strategy requires Lead Local Flood Authorities to maintain a register of flood risk assets, but that implementation is inconsistent and that many assets, especially SuDS and nature-based features are not captured”.


That was the initial background to this. It also emphatically recommended, in its conclusions in paragraphs 30 and 31, that more needs to be done on the whole issue of surface water.

I part company with the Minister in that I believe the guidelines need to be mandatory, we need a legal basis and we need to implement Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, because of the ruling last month in the case of Gladman Developments Limited v the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government and Lancaster City Council. This is important and has caused much concern among practitioners, in particular the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, with which I did some interesting work on bioresources, removing the solids out of sewage and making money out of that, but that is for another day.

CIWEM is deeply concerned because this case set aside the sequential test. I quote from its letter, which I will make available to Hansard. The court judgment

“has a large impact on Planning, not just the Sequential Test which is worrying but also the status of SuDS in development. At the original appeal the inspector dismissed the application as A sequential Test was not carried out but required. The applicant then went to the High Court, contending that the inspector has erred in law, by treating the NPPF as establishing a requirement that planning permission must be refused in every case where the sequential test had not been undertaken… The court agreed and quashed the decision, finding that this is one matter that needs to be weighed up against the other factors and not a sole reason to refuse an application. The scheme was for 64 new homes in Lancaster”.

In the view of CIWEM and others:

“This not only weakens Flood Risk Policy but also the implication that weakens the stance that if a development does not include SuDS is this a strong enough reason in the planning balance to refuse an application on its own”.


That court case has driven a coach and horses through government policy, and I would argue most vigorously that we need to have a mandatory basis and set aside these voluntary guidelines. We need to have one mandatory standard respected by all planning authorities the length and breadth of the country—otherwise we are not doing our duty to householders to have a safe residence, free from the prospect of flooding and, in particular, free from sewage coming into their homes.

I turn now to Amendment 222B. I spoke in the clean energy Bill, when the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who has just taken his place, was an excellent Minister. He has now been replaced by another excellent Minister. I was staggered by the way in which these battery energy storage systems were criss-crossing north Yorkshire and the rest of rural England and causing complete havoc. We do not yet know what additional resources are being given to the fire and rescue services, but we know that they are not statutory consultees to these developments. We had a major wildfire—and there were 196 wildfires in England last year, which takes an enormous amount of resources in terms of water and the fire and rescue services. The wildfire came perilously close to burning down farms and residences, and it also imperilled livestock.

The thinking behind Amendment 222B is to ensure that fire and rescue services will be statutory consultees going forward. My main concern is that, for example, in my former constituency, the village of Scotton, which is very important to me, because my niece lives in Lingerfield, one of the villages next door to it, is going to have two of these large battery storage plants, and for good measure, one of the largest solar farms in the country is next door to it. There is another one elsewhere in what was my constituency, in South Kilvington, also perilously close to a school. If both those units were to go on fire at the same time, as well as there being a wildfire in a different part of north Yorkshire, what resources are there? To make sure that that is considered at the time of a planning application, I am asking that there be a duty to consult fire and rescue services and that they be statutory consultees.

Briefly, I bumped into the chief executive of the North York Moors National Park, who briefed me on the earlier amendment on national parks and strategic planning. I put on record that it goes the extra mile to ensure that it consults with every single body, including other planning authorities such as North Yorkshire Council and others, including NGOs, to make sure that any planning application on its land is fully considered.

With those few remarks, I hope that the Minister will finally agree to a mandatory duty for SUDS, and also that fire and rescue services will be statutory consultees.

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 241E is in my name. I hope that it does not need much introduction, because it pretty much does what it says on the tin. Where a spatial development strategy involves a national park, the national park authority should be involved in the development of the strategy. That sounds so much like a no-brainer that I would not be surprised if the Minister tells me that it is in the Bill already, but my understanding is that, without this amendment, although the national park authorities need to be consulted before a strategy is submitted, they do not need to be consulted while it is being developed in the first place.

This may come from the thinking that a national park is a big, empty wilderness just for nature, but the South Downs National Park and New Forest National Park are places where nearly 500,000 live, and even more work, and cover around 10% of the land in England and Wales, including key bits of national infrastructure, such as roads and energy projects. It seems clear that working with the national park authority is the best way in which to plan a spatial development strategy within or affecting a national park. The relevant national park authority has experience and expertise about so many aspects crucial to an SDS—infrastructure and planning, the rural economy, the tourist economy, opportunities for nature recovery and climate targets—so excluding it seems to set things up for failure. This amendment aims to give national park authorities a statutory role during the planning of an SDS in a really simple way, and I very much hope that the Minister agrees with its sentiments, at least, and will consider tabling a government amendment along these lines.

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[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I understand what the noble Lord says. I do not have the statistics in front of me but I have visited a number of very good brownfield sites in London. The issue of building on brownfield is not the only issue preventing building in London; there are viability issues that are quite unrelated to that. I accept that viability can be an issue on brownfield land. Indeed, we are very much taking into account some of the issues around viability in the new packages that we are developing with London in order to encourage London boroughs and the Mayor of London to think about how we can work further to deliver against the housing demand in London.

This is a key issue, but it is not as simple as a lack of use of brownfield sites. Nearly all the housing sites that I have visited right across the country have been, to one extent or another, developments on brownfield sites. That is the right way to go. We will of course continue to monitor this, but I do not want to create an inflexible requirement that will mean that people who are in a situation where they cannot use brownfield sites cannot develop anything. We must be very careful about this, but I understand the points being made.

I turn to Amendment 131. I am glad to see that the House of Lords is taking our environmental responsibilities very seriously, because we have a number of amendments to this Bill that have been recycled from the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, of which Amendment 131 is an early contender. However, I appreciate that this amendment is slightly different in that it relates specifically to strategic development strategies. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. His amendment seeks to make it a statutory requirement for local planning authorities, either separately or jointly, to appoint a suitably qualified chief planning officer. I absolutely understand the intention behind the amendment. As we discussed during the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Act, I share the view that it is very important for planners to have a presence within the leadership structures of local authorities. As I have said previously, it is our mission to try and make sure that we highlight the role and importance of planning for all local authorities, whichever level of planning they are operating at.

However, I do not believe that this is an issue that should be addressed through legislation at this stage. The Government consider it essential that each authority should retain the flexibility to determine the most effective way to organise its own planning functions, particularly because, in England, they vary widely in scale and nature. In practice, many already operate with a chief planner, as I think the noble Lord said, or the equivalent senior role, although what that role entails varies widely between, for example, a county authority focused mainly on minerals and waste, a small district council and a large London borough.

As I promised to do during the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, I will continue to keep this matter under review as we take forward further reforms to the planning system. This is something that I am happy to explore further with local authorities and the sector as part of that work. I will aim to expedite that work, but it would not be appropriate to introduce this into legislation without doing that first. I therefore want to do a bit more work on this before we take any decisions on it.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, for Amendment 132, which would require strategic authorities to prepare sustainable drainage assessments. I admire her persistence on the issue of sustainable drainage systems; she has a great deal of knowledge on this that I greatly appreciate her bringing to planning matters. I reassure her that the Government are committed to taking a systemic approach to tackling drainage issues and , in particular, improving the implementation of sustainable drainage systems. Through this Bill, we are giving mayors of strategic authorities outside London the ability to call in planning applications of potential strategic importance. Where a planning application is called in, the mayor must consider the application in accordance with the development plan for the area and national planning policy.

In December 2024, we revised the National Planning Policy Framework to require all developments that may have drainage impacts to incorporate sustainable drainage systems. We are proposing to go further through the current consultation on the new framework, which proposes that all sustainable drainage systems should be designed in accordance with new national standards introduced by the Government last year. The consultation also includes proposals for clearer engagement between plan-making authorities and wastewater companies when plans are being made, taking into account the impacts of planned growth. This is to provide a clearer understanding of capacity and any additional infrastructure needs.

Against this background, I am concerned that the noble Baroness’s amendment would impose a burden on strategic authorities without being effective. Mayors of strategic authorities will deal with only a small number of planning applications themselves, so it would be disproportionate to expect them to produce a statutory drainage assessment, which would likely be very partial, as they would not be able to look holistically at all potential development coming forward in their area. Nor should this amendment be necessary, given the steps that we are taking to improve the assessment of drainage needs and the delivery of sustainable drainage systems and the clear requirement for drainage matters to be addressed when individual development proposals are being considered.

I will take back the issue that the noble Baroness raised on the specific legal case. That is as a relatively new court decision, so I am sure that the MHCLG team are reviewing any impact on the Bill. I will respond in writing to her and other Members of the Committee on that.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

The Minister said that the judgment was on 15 January. If she and her department consider that their policy is being set aside by very clever planning barristers, would she perhaps bring forward an amendment from the department that would be much better worded than my humble effort in this regard? It is completely inappropriate for the sequential test to be set aside in the way that it has been, and it is contrary to what she is trying to do in her department.

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Moved by

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering]

141: Schedule 20, page 225, line 22, at end insert—
“(2A) The mayoral combined authority must include amongst the projects identified measures that will promote growth through the safeguarding and promotion of existing cultural, creative, and community infrastructure such as grassroots music venues, theatres and other live performance spaces.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, connected with another in the name of Baroness McIntosh of Pickering, seeks to ensure that local growth plans include provision about cultural venues.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to introduce the amendments in this group. I thank my noble friends—I call them that—Lord Clancarty and Lord Freyberg for supporting them. I support Amendment 147 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, but I will speak particularly on Amendments 141, 146 and 222.

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[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering —who never tests my patience, she has so much knowledge and experience—and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for their amendments on the role of culture in local growth plans and on the agent of change principle.

On Amendments 141, 146 and 147, the Government are committed to ensuring that arts and culture thrive in every part of the country. In January, the Government announced an investment package of £1.5 billion, of which £1.2 billion is new, to support arts, culture, museums, libraries and heritage. Noble Lords have made a very powerful case for the inclusion of culture, heritage and arts to be included in mayoral competences, which is still under active consideration. We have committed to working with mayoral strategic authorities, including through a devolved fund, to drive growth in this important sector.

We know that mayoral combined authorities and mayoral combined county authorities recognise the role of culture and the creative sector in supporting thriving communities. I also mention the cohesion role that they play, which was mentioned so powerfully by the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, in an earlier debate on this subject. Indeed, many of them are raising culture in their local growth plans. Many places are taking this further, such as Greater Manchester with its dedicated culture strategy and the West Midlands—for the noble Baroness, Lady Griffin—establishing a partnership programme with the industry. Indeed, the noble Baroness gave other powerful examples. I take this opportunity to congratulate those two absolutely brilliant young women from the BRIT School who won Grammy awards. They absolutely stormed it at the Grammy awards the other day—so congratulations to them.

Introducing an additional duty would be burdensome and, as demonstrated, is not necessary to achieve the desired effect. In December, the noble Baroness, Lady Hodge, published her independent review of Arts Council England. Following that, the Government are considering how to ensure that culture is supported by strategic authorities. As part of this, we are considering how it relates to all strategic authorities, not just the mayoral combined authorities and mayoral combined county authorities that are developing local growth plans.

Specifically on the amendments from noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, which relate to the pipeline of investment projects that must be set out as part of local growth plans, I point out that our guidance sets an expectation that this pipeline should be a shortlist of projects that are critical for unlocking growth, with the potential to crowd in private investment, and capable of unlocking significant returns. It is our view that, ultimately, it must be up to local areas to determine which projects fit that bill. These amendments would run counter to that principle and would require a one-size-fits-all approach that I know many Members are wary of. Rather than being mutually reinforcing for local growth, and the arts and culture, these amendments could cause confusion over the types of projects to include as part of that investment pipeline.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, for her Amendment 222, and share her desire to ensure that new housing does not constrain the operation of existing facilities in the surrounding area. I think that the music trust makes a very powerful case in this regard. However, new legislation would be duplicative of existing policy and is also less flexible, as it gives authorities less ability to weigh important considerations when making planning decisions. The agent of change principle is firmly established in the planning system as a relevant policy consideration. The current National Planning Policy Framework is clear that businesses should not have unreasonable restrictions placed on them as a result of development permitted after they were established.

Local planning authorities can request noise impact assessments when they consider it necessary; when making decisions, they have the ability to consider factors such as the type of development and how close it is to major sources of noise. The planning process can help to reduce adverse impacts by using measures such as careful layout and good design to limit noise transmission. The licensing regime also already enables local authorities to consider the agent of change principle when making decisions. The legislation is designed to recognise that different communities face different challenges, and local licensing authorities are able to incorporate the principle into their statements of licensing policy if they consider it necessary or useful to do so.

Furthermore, local authorities can consider a range of factors when deciding whether a complaint amounts to a statutory nuisance. They have a legal duty to investigate each case individually, taking into account relevant circumstances and their knowledge of the local area. I recognise the importance of safeguarding key cultural establishments from new residential development, and we are already taking a number of steps to improve the implementation of the agent of change principle. I hope that answers the points from the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, about this being in place. We want to toughen it up, and I will talk now about some of those steps.

In planning, we are consulting on a new National Planning Policy Framework, which includes the option of strengthening the agent of change policy and clearly setting out that applicants must consider both the current and permitted levels of activity for nearby existing uses, such as licensed music and cultural venues. As I pointed out before, although the National Planning Policy Framework is not a statutory document in itself—it cannot be because it needs to be flexible as circumstances change—it sits in the statutory planning process and carries substantial weight because of that.

In licensing, we recently conducted a call for evidence as part of the licensing reforms programme, which included a question on the application of the agent of change principle within the licensing regime. Detailed analysis covering responses to this will be published in due course.

For all these reasons, I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, will feel able not to press their amendments.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all who have spoken; it goes to show the breadth of knowledge we have, both in the Committee and in the House, among those involved. I was particularly taken by the reference that the noble Baroness, Lady Griffin, made to the BRIT School. It is outstanding that we had two clear winners at that time.

On the venues, I think it is important that we continue to stress these, but on the principle of agent of change, I am afraid I have to say that I am not content with the Minister’s response. I should have known, being a non-practising Scottish advocate, that we have a statutory basis for this in Scots law. The noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, has proven very eloquently how we are operating under an inferior system here. Certainly, it is the wish of all those who gave evidence to the inquiry on the reform of the Licensing Act 2003, albeit in 2016-17, that it could operate better. We are still in a position where we do not have statutory guidelines.

I simply do not accept, for the same reasons I gave in the earlier debate on SUDS, that planning guidance is planning guidance. You can have a legal basis in an Act such as the Licensing Act, which we recommended be reformed, or this would be the ideal Bill in which to put it. If that is what licensing and planning practitioners are asking us to do, I feel honour-bound that we should do this. I wish to bring this back on Report and would welcome a meeting with the Minister and others who are concerned by this before that time. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 141 withdrawn.