Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 27th October 2025 Lords Chamber

Will this Labour Government also please commit to not compromising on quality and beauty and accept this amendment? It is not good enough just to build more houses; they need to be designed well, practical and sustainable.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 112. I start by thanking my noble friend Lady Pinnock for pitching in on the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Best, in the wee small hours as I attempted to get my last train. I was very pleased to support both of the noble Lord’s amendments. I know from experience that housing for older people is still the Cinderella of the sector. I also publicly thank the noble Lord, Lord Best, for his persistence on the issue to improve homes as we age. Never before has the need for building standard M4(2) been more necessary. It is very short-sighted of successive Governments not to grasp this nettle, because retrofitting, as has been said, is difficult and expensive. I would therefore quote the chant “Why are we waiting?”, and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

Amendment 91, from the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, recognises the need for design in spatial development strategies, so I hope that she will support my amendment in the next group.

On Amendment 112, which I also submitted in Committee, I am very pleased to say that we have had some productive meetings with the Minister, who has been generous, as ever, with her time. I truly believe that she understands the key issues, and I hope that she will be able to give us some assurance that the requirements within this amendment can be taken forward somehow. I look forward to her response.

Amendment 112 is a fairly simple amendment, brought to us from Centrepoint, the amazing charity for young homeless people. It is basically saying that, where a particular housing type is being set up for homeless youngsters, it should be permissible to deviate from the nationally described space standards so that the finances stack up and the total model works. Put simply, this new model, which is being called stepping-stone accommodation, provides for smaller accommodation than what would be prescribed, but it is very much more than okay for youngsters leaving care, those who have been sofa surfing or those who are trying to get off the streets. It is their own home, with their own front door. I waxed lyrical about the quality of this accommodation from my visit, and I will not repeat myself. However, it is important to say that it was designed with young people and that they love living there.

The Minister said, in her response to me, that councils, in their plans, can already do this; it is permissible. She is right, and while it is acknowledged that nationally described space standards are not in themselves mandatory, the practical reality has proved to be rather different. Local planning authorities, as a matter of course, look to these standards as the primary point of reference when formulating policy. Consequently, where discretion is left to local interpretation, planning determinations become protracted, frequently extending over a number of years. In Committee, I described cases that involved anything between two and four years of additional time and costs for these charities, which can ill afford to have to pay that extra money.

These are not isolated occurrences. Rather, they reveal a systemic problem in which essential provision for vulnerable young people is stalled by prolonged and often unnecessary debate over standards.

This amendment would allow planning officers and committees to move these applications forward, at speed and with confidence. Estimates indicate that as many as 30,000 of these homes will be required in England alone. It is for this reason that the amendment remains indispensable. By establishing a clear and immediate exemption, it would provide certainty to local authorities, prevent unnecessary obstruction and expedite the delivery of much-needed accommodation.

We hope that the Minister can give Centrepoint and other homelessness charities—which are watching this—some real incentive to continue their excellent work and feel confident when approaching council officers for the exemption from the prescribed national space standards, and to be listened to and supported for this very specific and narrow course. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I want to make a quick point. If you are trying to build a lot of houses, you have to sell them. The rate of sale determines the rate of building: if you do not sell the houses, the builder goes bankrupt because houses are very expensive to build. As a result, it would open up the market much wider if we incorporated these standards for access, because more people would be in the market who could buy them. It must help the rate of sales, because there is a bigger market. Why not do it? I cannot see why not. We are assured that it does not cost any more to do it, so it seems silly not to.

On smaller houses, people who travel live in caravans and motor homes and are very happy doing that. Why are we trying to be so prescriptive about the size of houses? If you build a house of a size that is going to sell, why not?

--- Later in debate ---

As noble Lords know, we must build more homes in order to tackle the root causes of homelessness. The Bill underpins our commitment to deliver 1.5 million homes over this Parliament, and we have confirmed a new 10-year £39 billion social and affordable homes programme. The current planning framework already allows local planning authorities to do what this amendment seeks to achieve. Each planning application is judged on its own individual merit, and the weight given to competing material considerations is a matter for the local planning authority. For example, it could be that an authority considers the need for a particular type of housing tenure to outweigh local policy around space standards, when considering all relevant material considerations. We should leave that choice and decision in the hands of local authorities for the reason that the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, gave: it is important that we do not undermine the wider picture in relation to space standards.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

I absolutely understand those points; as a localism person, obviously I agree with that. However, the key issue is that planning officers are playing “safety first”. Their immediate response is, “No”, for the reasons that the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, set out earlier. Is there any way we can strengthen the guidance to refer to “stepping stone” accommodation as something that the Government might look favourably on or permit? The current experience is that planning officers are hitting a brick wall each time. I totally understand why it cannot be in the Bill, but I do not see why we cannot put something into guidance that strengthens their arm when they sit down at the first meeting to discuss the matter.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for making those points. The best thing might be to have another meeting outside the Chamber to discuss what we might do. I understand the point she is making; perhaps planning officers are being overly cautious because they do not recognise that they already have such a power. I am happy to meet her outside the Chamber to discuss how we might move forward on that issue. I am very keen that this does not go into the Bill, because if it did, it would risk undermining the work that has been done over many years to improve the space standards that we already have for our homes. They were hard fought for and hard won, so I do not want this proposed provision to undermine them.