Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 17th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, as it is Committee stage, I have some simple questions about pre-application with a view to trying to move this important conversation forward. First, are the pre-application arrangements different if a use is already in the local plan? On the coal mine example and water extraction, those should be in the local plan. We have a big problem, because more than half of local plans are not up to date, which was certainly a big concern of mine when I was sitting on the committee.

Secondly, presumably, a developer can do a voluntary pre-application process, or is that not practical? A lot of my experience was in large retail developments. We did a lot of this sort of stuff because we wanted to get local consent. It is a question of what you can do which is voluntary and what is required.

Thirdly, what are the biggest delay factors in the pre-application process? Is it transport objections, heritage, environment features—such as nutrient neutrality or bats—or lawyers going around in circles? Have the Government had a look at what the problem is?

Fourthly, is there an alternative route where you have a much shorter process, perhaps with a deadline and only for the big schemes and not for a small house? This is an important area in local communities, but we want to get the delays down.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Pinnock’s amendment. Pre-application consultation, as she correctly said, not only gives communities a chance to shape proposals but can speed up things further down the line. It is not necessarily a delaying factor.

The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, just raised an interesting issue in that we do not know what the delaying factor is. Is it the statutory consultees, far more than the communities, for example, that are part of the delaying factor? Given the scale of the Government’s ambition, quite rightly, to develop housing and the accompanying infrastructure, and to make master plans to do that, it is much better to take the community along with you. If the community already feels left behind because it is cut out at the very first stage, which is what the Bill does, then however many nice words may be said later by the development corporations or so on, that is not really going to cut much ice. Therefore, the amendments tabled by my noble friend are particularly important.

I also really do not like the fact that, even if communities and the public have made some responses, there is no requirement for the people doing the development to take that into account. Again, that is a very disempowering issue, which undermines the whole democratic basis of our planning system.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I offer my strong support for the entire presentation from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and her amendments. I cannot top her example of unknown mines underground, but the example that I was thinking of is on a much smaller scale, and it addresses the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. She said that those mines, et cetera—the physical infrastructure—should be on the record; I think we all know that very often they are not.

However, there is also the question of the local community and how it works, which is never going to be written down. The example that I was thinking of comes from central London, from Camden borough. I was at a meeting where the council came along very excitedly with the idea that it was going to knock down a community centre, build housing, and build a new community centre on what most people from the outside thought were some pretty unpleasant, small, raggedy corner shops—a little row of shops which you get typically in suburban areas. The council officers and the local councillors were visibly astonished when local people, mostly elderly, were up in arms and horrified about the idea of those shops being demolished. They said, “We’re not mobile enough to get to Camden High Street and we’re scared of the traffic on Camden High Street and the speed at which it goes. Even though these shops are probably both very expensive and don’t have a great range of goods, et cetera, we hugely value them”. That is just a small-scale example of how only communities themselves know the way in which they work. If they had had input earlier on, there would not have been lots of very angry pensioners at that meeting, as we saw.

Amendment 107 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, is really important and picks up the use of technology, and potentially its positive use, and sets out rules for it. Again, I am afraid that my next example is also from Camden, because that is where lots of my planning stories come from. The Crick centre was imposed on the local community—I declare a retrospective interest in that I was the chair of the St Pancras and Somers Town Planning Action committee that opposed it, a long time ago. When it was finally built, people said, “But that doesn’t look anything like what the pictures looked like”. I think that is something that we are all extremely familiar with. The idea of creating some standards and rules—they already exist, but we should put them into statute—seems an extremely good one.

--- Later in debate ---

Lastly, Amendment 107, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller—

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

I apologise for interrupting the Minister, but it might be useful for the Committee to know that I had asked for my amendment to be degrouped. I am not sure what has happened here, but it is my intention to move the amendment in its place after Clause 51.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

Okay, I will not go into the detail on that amendment now but come back to it. It was originally listed as being in this group. I apologise for the misunderstanding. I would just say to the noble Baroness that I am a big fan of digital twinning, so I look forward to the debate on that subject.

I ask noble Lords who have amendments in this group not to press them and I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, to withdraw her amendment.