Impact of Environmental Regulations on Development (Built Environment Committee Report)

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts

Friday 19th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Banner, on his excellent maiden speech. I was very interested to hear his comments on Ukraine; from our side of the House, I reassure him again of our support for government actions on Ukraine to support the brave heroes there. I was delighted to hear that he is an active supporter of Brian May’s animal welfare campaign. We look forward to hearing more in the House about his expertise.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and all members of the Built Environment Committee for the extremely thorough and balanced way in which they have approached what I consider to be one of the most important issues facing our country. We know that we need to balance the development that we urgently need and the environmental protections that we would all want to see. For the future of our country, we must ensure that the developments and communities that are formed do no detriment to our rich biodiversity and, at best, will contribute significantly to its protection and enhancement.

It was a pleasure to listen to all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate, and I hope that the Government will work with all the public bodies involved to use this report as a catalyst for genuine and long-term change to the planning system and to the delivery mechanisms for housing, economic growth and regeneration. It is impossible to do justice to the 74 recommendations in the report in the time constraints of the debate, but so many of them are welcome, thoughtful and so important that I hope they can be implemented with as little delay as possible.

I will restrict my comments to some of the key areas that have emerged during the debate: co-ordination in government, the planning process, some brief comments on nutrient neutrality, the availability of good environmental data and mapping, and the use of brownfield land.

First, I will comment on one of the report’s key findings: the lack of co-ordination between government departments and the public bodies associated with them. That issue was raised by my noble friend Lord Berkeley, the noble Lord, Lord Best, and the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton. If we are to plan and deliver a better future for the country, we simply cannot carry on with the current silo thinking in government departments. As the report rightly puts it:

“We see no path to delivering the Government’s ambitions by the intended deadlines unless there is a strong display of political leadership to deliver and implement a comprehensive strategy for both development and the environment”.


What work is currently going on to ensure that we have a long-term housing plan, a comprehensive and long-awaited land use strategy, and a plan that will ensure future food security? These strands clearly need drawing together, so can the Minister indicate how the Government intend to respond to the need to ensure better cross-departmental working?

At local level, it is vital that local authorities can respond to the dual challenge of delivering housing and protecting the environment—an issue raised very powerfully by the noble Lord, Lord Best—and that their local plans are effective in helping them to do so. The Government’s decision to remove the need for local housing targets last year made this worse, not better, and has further delayed the production of local plans. As we have heard, a quarter of local planning authorities do not have an adopted local plan, and almost 30% of those with an adopted local plan have one that is more than five years old. There is an urgent need to ensure that local authorities, as well as the statutory bodies that need to contribute to local plans, are properly resourced to do that—an issue raised by my noble friend Lord Berkeley and the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton.

While the limited increase in planning fees is welcome, it is a matter of regret that the opportunity to introduce full-cost recovery for major planning applications was not taken in the passage of the then Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. The recommendation in the report—that for any new regulations or requirements on the planning system or on development there should be a mandatory consultation with Homes England and the Planning Inspectorate—is welcome, but I suggest that, as local government is responsible for the delivery of planning, the LGA be added to that list. This too would prevent the issue flagged in the report: that the introduction of regulations without detail and practical solutions would inhibit or delay development.

There is a need to urgently consider the issue of nutrient neutrality, to ensure that the development of much-needed housing is not impeded, but that, at the same time, it is not adding to the enormous and toxic pressures on our natural water resources, which have, sadly, become all too familiar to us in recent years—what the noble Earl, Lord Russell, described as a false dichotomy. There has been significant success in the mitigation networks undertaken by Natural England, such as those in the Solent. Urgent consideration of how they can be built on is needed, including lessons learned and any necessary adaptations for wider rollout to be undertaken. We understand the recommendation that this should initially be publicly funded, but there must be urgent work with the private sector to ensure that a long-term funding approach is developed.

As a council leader who has faced many planning challenges over the years, I was delighted to see the great crested newt get a special mention in the report. However, if we are to deliver the significant goal of biodiversity net gain, we will need to have much better environmental data and mapping, with a proper, data-driven land use strategy at the top of the pyramid. Access to local, environmental, species and natural resource data is vital to ensure that planning departments and developers can take relevant data into account. New technologies, particularly satellite mapping, can and should be employed to facilitate this process and to ensure that it is comprehensive.

In addition to all those significant challenges is the overriding need to find more suitable land for housing without impinging on the truly precious green spaces that are our natural heritage. Unfortunately, the government approach to date means that nobody is winning. The housing crisis is

“engulfing a generation of hard-working aspirational people”,

while the UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. New analysis from the Labour Party today reveals the scale of this housing failure, with planning applications received and granted dropping to the lowest level on record. Applications made and granted have dropped by a fifth. What we have seen is an inconsistent and haphazard approach, leading to significant amounts of speculative development, including on high-quality, nature-rich, green-belt land, often via an appeal over the heads of councils and out of the reach of local people.

A Labour Government would take a brownfield-first approach to development across England, stressing that areas with enough brownfield land should not release green-belt land. However, we will release some land currently classed as green belt to build the homes that Britain needs. We intend to create a new class of grey-belt land to prioritise ugly, disused grey-belt land, and set tough new conditions for releasing that land. We will ensure that any development benefits local communities. This follows cases such as affordable homes in Tottenham being blocked because a disused petrol station had been designated as green-belt land.

We are setting out today five golden rules for grey-belt housebuilding, to deliver affordable homes, to boost infrastructure and public services such as schools and GPs, and to improve genuine green spaces. We will also look to ensure high environmental standards that go above the legal minimum on biodiversity net gain. The chair of Natural England has rightly said that new housing and better protection for green spaces, wildlife and nature should not be opposites, and that a new approach to the green belt should be part of the answer to the UK’s housing crisis.

I look forward to hearing from the Minister on the Government’s response to the challenges set by this extremely welcome report. I again thank all noble Lords who worked on it.