Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Scott of Bybrook Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 15th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendments 206A, 351ZA and 362 in this group, which also relate to mayoral development corporations. I am supportive of what the Minister is proposing in Amendment 186 and the related amendments. It is helpful to see that there is an established hierarchy between development corporations so that, if the Government establish a development corporation, it trumps a mayoral development corporation, in effect, while a mayoral development corporation trumps a locally led development corporation. However, my amendments raise an additional—and, I hope, helpful—issue.

Before I come on to that, let me say this: the underlying purpose of the development corporations in Part 4 of this Bill is to give mayors, through such corporations, the scope to engage in not just regeneration but development. So mayoral development corporations can be the vehicle for significant new settlements, both as urban extensions and in new sites. That is helpful, too.

Of course, what we do not have in this hierarchy of development corporations is the availability of local authorities to propose locally led development corporations on the same basis as the Government and mayors can do. That was in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act but has not yet, with the exception of one of the accountability measures at the back of the section, been brought into force. Unless the Minister tells me otherwise, as I understand it, it is not the Government’s intention to bring into force the further provisions of that Act on locally led development corporations. For the avoidance of doubt, if I am wrong about that, I would be most grateful if the Minister could tell us so in her response to this debate.

Members who were attentive to the running list of amendments will recall that I tabled Amendments 204 and 205 back in July. Their purpose is to give other mayors access to the same powers to establish—I should say “propose”, since the Government establish them—mayoral development corporations as are available to the Mayor of London under the Localism Act. This is not to say that mayors do not have any such powers. However, since the Localism Act, they have generally been established under statutory instruments. Some of those have given mayors similar powers to those of the Mayor of London, but there are often gaps; the time pressures on these debates does not permit me the pleasure of examining precisely which gaps have been identified and for which mayors, but that does not matter. The point is that my Amendments 204 and 205 had the objective of giving mayors—all mayors—the same powers as are available to the London mayor.

I then found, when the Government published the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill in the other place, that Clause 36 and Schedule 17 of that Bill provided for other mayors to have the same powers as the London mayor. It struck me that, under those circumstances, there was no merit in my continuing to push Amendments 204 and 205, so I withdrew them. It further struck me that, if we provide for other mayors to have those powers under the English devolution Bill, it will run to a slower timetable than this Bill.

Therefore, Amendment 206A, which would bring into the Bill the new schedule proposed in Amendment 351ZA, is drafted in the same terms, substantially, as the Government’s English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill. It would have the same effect—to give mayors generally the same powers as the London mayor—but it would do so in this Bill. Instead of waiting until some time next year—a time to be determined—and given that this is the Government’s number one legislative priority and that we are going to debate into the night if we have to, we can be confident that the provision would reach the statute book this year.

Based on the past experience of the unwillingness of Ministers to bring provisions of Bills that we have passed into force, Amendment 362 requires that the provision be brought into force within two months after the passing of this Bill. Therefore, we would be looking at all mayors having the powers by the early part of next year. This is important and relevant because we are already beyond the point at which the New Towns Taskforce said that it would publish its recommendations, including sites for new towns. It said in its interim report that it would publish the final report and recommendations in the summer; it is definitely now no longer the summer. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us that it will do so shortly, as there is a degree of planning blight associated with their not being published. There is benefit to delivering on the objective to build more homes if we publish them sooner rather than later.

I hope that this Bill will secure Royal Assent this year—ideally, by the end of November—and that, by the end of January, with the inclusion of Amendment 206A and the proposed new schedule, the mayors will have access to those powers by the end of January.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 195A and to our probing opposition to Clause 93 standing part of the Bill.

Starting with Amendment 195A, I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify what is meant in practice by the provision that allows a development corporation to

“do anything necessary … for the purposes or incidental purposes of the new town”.

How is such a wide power to be defined, limited and safeguarded in its use? I would be grateful for a clear answer on that point.

Turning to Clause 93 more broadly, I make it clear that we are supportive of development corporations. Our concern is to understand more fully how they are intended to function under the Bill and to ensure that they are established on a sound and accountable footing.

I ask the Minister how local accountability will be preserved under the changes to the development corporations, given that they already have the ability to operate across multiple non-contiguous sites, an ability that will no doubt take on greater significance with the advance of devolution. How will such corporations function in practice alongside devolution? What safeguards will be in place to avoid confusion or diluted accountability, particularly in the context of local government reorganisation? This question seems especially pressing in the light of the changes that may arise from the forthcoming English devolution Bill, which your Lordships’ House will be considering in the coming months. How will the Government ensure that the role of development corporations sits coherently alongside wider reforms to local and regional governance?

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[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My understanding is that the powers in the Act relating to locally led development corporations will be brought into force, but I have committed to write to the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, with a full explanation. I will circulate that letter when I have published it.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The Minister also mentioned the money that has been put aside by the Government to support further planning, skills training et cetera. Did she say that that could be used also by development corporations? I had the understanding that it was for local government and not for development corporations.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am sorry if I misled the noble Baroness. I meant to say that the Government recognise the issue around planning capacity. We have already allocated that £46 million for local government, and we must have the discussions with Sir Michael Lyons that recognise that we need to make sure that the capacity is there to deal with new town development corporations as well.

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[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, in the absence of other speakers, I am interested in the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, and will be even more interested in the Minister’s response, bearing in mind what I said in the previous group about management of risk and who underpins a development corporation in the event of financial loss.

Amendment 197 is very important. There are two issues: the automatic

“removal of hope value from the valuation of the relevant land”

proposed for development and, secondly, whether land purchases by development corporations should be seen as

“public sector investments to be counted against departmental expenditure limits”.

This amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, is important and I hope that the Minister will respond to it.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Fuller for his amendments. The financing of development corporations is an important issue and we will continue to engage on it. I look forward to the views of Sir Michael Lyons’s task force on the issues raised by noble Lords in this and the previous group on the financial aspects of development corporations.

We need to ensure that financing is long term and sustainable. If corporations are to take on debt to fund infrastructure, they and their lenders will need confidence that the debt will be repaid. This is a particular issue as a current Government cannot bind a future one. I will not comment on the issues in Amendment 197 as it has not been spoken to, but I assume that they will be discussed in group seven.

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[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

I am amazed that no other Members of your Lordships’ House want to speak about local news and newspapers. I broadly agree with the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. He is absolutely right that the question we have to ask ourselves is: with the sad decline, as I see it, of printed local news, how best do we make sure that important public notices, as defined in legislation, that are currently placed only in printed news outlets, get a greater reading and more information about them spread by including them in reputable or quality online news outlets?

I agree with the noble Lord that it should be both, because a number of people still read a paper version of a local newspaper. I am amazed that there are people where I live—they contact me—who read these public notices and ask, “What on earth is going on here?”, even though they are printed in font size 6 or 7, so you need a magnifying glass to read them. I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has considered that public notices in the print media are very tightly printed, and how they can be accessible online. Sometimes, you get a whole page of public notices. I generally agree that we have to do something to make sure that more people have access to important information.

My understanding is that currently there is a public notice portal—public notices are gathered from the print media and put on to this portal. It would be interesting to know whether the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is thinking about enabling councils, through legislation, to choose whether to publish directly on to that public portal.

Generally, I more or less support the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. We have to have reform and your Lordships’ House and others have considered this in detail, so the question is how we set about it. With those remarks, I look forward to other comments on this group of amendments.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Lucas highlight and reaffirm the importance of local news publishers. Increasingly, these are online, but not always. Some areas still have quite successful newspapers that have print runs, sometimes daily but now often weekly, but this differs in local areas, so I think that local authorities are best placed to decide what medium they use for advertising all things planning.

On this side of the Committee, we support the existence of local news publishers across the United Kingdom. As we have heard, they serve as an important conduit between local people and their authorities and are crucial for upholding community engagement and local democracy, values which I hope all noble Lords will join me in supporting. Indeed, the importance of local news publishers is even more significant when we consider it in context of important planning and development decisions. Local people are those most affected by such decisions and it is important that their voices are heard and meaningfully listened to. Local news publishers play a vital role in making sure both that local people are represented and that the relevant information is disseminated to them. I hope that the Government will take these amendments seriously and I look forward to hearing how they will be addressed.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for tabling these interesting amendments, which relate to the publicity of notices on compulsory purchase orders. I cannot help thinking that there is a solution to this, but perhaps not exactly this one. We have to have a think about this. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, I support local news publications. I am one of the sad local government geeks who always turns straight to the public notices, not just because I want to see what my own council is doing—now that I am not there anymore—but because I want to see what the next-door councils are doing as well.

Local newspapers are an important part of the way that information is shared, but they also play an important role in supporting democracy, communicating with our residents and being a signpost to all kinds of events that are going on locally. I know that they have been through a very tough time recently. In my area, if we did not have the paper edition of the newspaper, we would probably not have an online paper either—the paper is produced online but also produced as a paper copy. It is not delivered anymore but you can pick it up in a supermarket, so it is an important part of our local life.

The amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, would reform the Acquisition of Land Act 1981 and constrain acquiring authorities in the type of local newspaper that notices of making and confirmation of compulsory purchase orders must be published in. The type of local newspaper would have to meet certain quality and readership criteria, including possessing at least one director legally resident in the United Kingdom, employing at least one journalist not funded or operated by a government, political party or legislative institution, being subject to a code of ethical standards and demonstrating strong connections to the locality in which they operate.

The legislation currently requires acquiring authorities to publish notices of the making and confirmation of CPOs in newspapers circulating in the locality of the land included in the relevant CPO, but it does not prescribe the type of local newspaper. The Government consider that the requirement to publish notices in newspapers is an important part of the CPO process. Acquiring authorities are already motivated to ensure that notices are well publicised, because that helps them to avoid legal challenge.

However, these amendments would constrain and place unnecessary burdens on acquiring authorities when attempting to comply with the requirement to publish notices. The amendments would make it more difficult for authorities to navigate the process, increase the potential risk of legal challenges, which would result in additional costs, and delay decision-making and the delivery of benefits in the public interest. The amendments would therefore complicate and delay the CPO process further, which is contrary to the Government’s objectives.

It would be helpful if the notices could be published in a bigger font. I believe that the noble Baroness said that it is usually size 6, but it is more like size 2 in my local newspaper. Something I find helpful is taking a picture of them on my phone and then expanding that.

For all the reasons I have given, I kindly ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.