Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 11th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 178, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, for their support. This amendment concerns local plans. As we all know, when it comes to planning, local plans are really the infrastructure, the plumbing, of decisions on whether stuff happens locally, and how it relates to local nature recovery strategies and land use frameworks. I rather hesitate to speak about land use frameworks and have never talked about them in this House before. The noble Baroness opposite is known as the world expert in this area, and I am sure she will put me right on any detail I have wrong in her subsequent contribution.

Two revolutionary things are happening or are about to happen to how we use our land in England in particular. First, local nature recovery strategies, part of the very enlightened Conservative Environment Act, are now being implemented. Local authorities, primarily—the responsible authorities for local nature recovery strategies—are going through this process at the moment. A handful of strategies have been agreed by Defra and signed off, and I hope the remaining 20 or so will be fairly soon. They are all about attempting to ensure that the decline of nature in our nation, which we are all too aware of, is not only reversed but becomes very positive as we move towards targets such as 30 by 30 later in the decade.

With land use frameworks under consultation at the moment, we are expecting recommendations to come out from government. I think the wish of us all is to ensure that land is used in appropriate ways, that there is multiuse and that dilemmas—or what are sometimes seen as conflicts, such as between food security and nature recovery in our countryside—are not that at all, and everybody works together to the benefit of everybody.

My amendment is really very simple, saying that for nature recovery and land use to be successful—which I am sure this Government and the Minister want them to be—they need to be delivered. Delivery is the key issue and the key challenge. One of the fundamental ways they can be delivered—and they will not be delivered if this does not happen—is if they are integrated into and taken account of well in local plans. That is what this amendment is asking. Huge amounts of work have gone into local nature recovery strategies across England in terms of consultation and the work of local authorities, environmental groups, landowners and farmers. All of that has been enthusiastic and positive, but delivery cannot happen if they are not part of our planning infrastructure.

I am not suggesting that this amendment is perfect; I would clearly fall on the floor if the Minister accepted it as it is, but I ask the Government and the Minister how they will ensure that these two key planks of previous and present government policy can be delivered and implemented through local plans.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

I support everything that the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, has just said about Amendment 178—apart from his remarks about my expertise in land use frameworks. I am not expert; I am just old and have been around the block for so long promoting the idea of land use frameworks that people get confused about whether I actually know anything or not.

The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, absolutely hit the nail on the head. We have quite a number of new plans concerning land and nature around at the moment, invented by various pieces of legislation and policy, and it is vital that local plans, which are a key vehicle, take account of them. Otherwise, what is the point of doing them? Local plans are central vehicles for the delivery of the land use framework and local nature recovery strategies, which the noble Lord ably pointed out the value of.

I would just question the Minister as to whether local plans will be required to comply with the land use framework and local nature recovery strategies. If not, what will the delivery vehicles be for implementing these important plans, which we have only just agreed were important and are now being worked through? If there is no implementation vehicle, what is the point of doing them?

It would be good also to hear from the Minister what the latest is on the land use framework. The Conservative Party, when in government, promised me the land use framework by Christmas 2022, and then by Christmas 2023. The Labour Government went out to consultation fairly promptly after the election, before Christmas 2024. I was delighted yesterday to hear the new Defra Secretary of State endorse the importance of the land use framework under her new regime. We are again getting pretty close to Christmas. Can the Minister say whether we might see the next version by Christmas 2025?

[Baroness Helic (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 152ZA and 261A tabled by my noble friend Lady Hodgson. These would require spatial development strategies and environmental delivery plans to take proper account of animal welfare as set out in the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022. This is not about adding extra bureaucracy; it is about recognising a truth that we often ignore. Planning is not just about where we place bricks and mortar; it is about the choices we make for the land, the habitats and the creatures that depend on them. At present, there is a yawning gap between what is promised and what is delivered.

The University of Sheffield has shown that in new developments, 83% of hedge-grown highways, three-quarters of bat and bird boxes and almost half the promised hedges never materialised. Trees specified on planning plans were found dead and not planted at all. There are fine words in planning documents, but in practice animals are left without space or shelter. This is why the warning of the Animal Sentience Committee must be heeded. In its formal response on 27 June this year, the committee rightly stressed that the Planning and Infrastructure Bill conceptualises biodiversity as an abstract environmental good but ignores the lived experience of sentient animals, which will be displaced, harmed and killed during construction. The image it gave was searing—a bulldozer driving through a badger sett, burying animals alive, justified by the promise of a new sett to be built a decade later, never to be seen. The committee made good and sensible recommendations on welfare impact assessments, construction and timetables that avoid breeding seasons, and practical measures such as swift bricks, wildlife tunnels and hedgerow highways.

The case of the brown hare teaches us what happens when welfare is absent from the statute book. Once abundant in England, hares are now in deep decline because we fail to legislate for a close season. Hundreds of thousands are killed in breeding months, leverets are left to die, and populations are down by 80% in certain areas. If that can happen to such a cherished and loved animal, we should not be surprised that less visible creatures fare even worse.

EDPs risk levies being paid at the expense of impacts on animal welfare. The Bill risks directly impacting protected species, with bats, birds, badgers and hares uprooted from their habitats, distressed, or destroyed altogether. Conservation is not only about biodiversity; it cannot exist without animal welfare.

We must do better. Yes, there is a need for new homes and better infrastructure, but we also want living hedgerows, thriving trees, wildlife corridors that actually function and a countryside that remains alive. These amendments do not hold back growth; they simply hold us to a higher standard of responsibility. By adopting them, we would show that planning for the future is about not only housing numbers but the kind of country we wish to be: one that values progress, but not at the expense of wildlife, and builds for people, while safeguarding the animals which share our land.

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When this issue was debated in the Commons, the Minister’s response was that the Government could not see quite what extra benefit this amendment would deliver. I appreciate that the NERC Act and the strengthened biodiversity duty, which many Members of this House were responsible for strengthening during proceedings on the Environment Act in 2021, do give local authorities responsibilities for biodiversity, but there is no similar duty for climate change and adaptation. Equally, the Minister went on to claim that there have been significant national initiatives, including the Local Authority Climate Service, which provides a free meteorological service to help local authorities plot climate issues. But frankly, given the scale of the challenge we are talking about and that 300 of our local authorities have declared a climate emergency, it is probably fair to say that those initiatives on their own really do not cut the mustard. What is required, if we are going to seriously tackle our climate goals and deliver the homes for nature that we need, is to give local authorities this statutory duty. I beg to move.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 164 from the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, who has laid out the case very clearly. Local planning authorities are vital if the Government and we as a nation are going to achieve the legally binding targets and programmes for climate, environment and biodiversity listed in the amendment. We are likely to have this debate on multiple occasions over the next few months and years. Of course, we have already gone through this process of debating why major bodies—new bodies in legislation or bodies whose legislation is being changed—should have the opportunity of a statutory duty to promote these issues.

We had some success in this House in giving such a duty to the Crown Estate. Indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, played a sterling role there, and although it was not actually adopted in the legislation, it was included in the guidance to the Crown Estate. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, had he been in his place, would have been reminding the Committee that he, of course, has a Private Member’s Bill that would do the job in a sort of bulk-buy fashion and give a whole list of the key implementation public authorities a similar duty in one fell swoop. It would be absolutely the right way forward if that private legislation were adopted by the Government and put forward as a government Bill, because that is the most efficient way of doing it. Otherwise, noble Lords are going to have to listen to the likes of me, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, bang on about this sequentially as each body comes forward, until such time as we have debated the whole lot.

So, I commend this amendment and issue a stern address to the Government that accepting the Krebs Private Member’s Bill would be a splendid shortcut to the right destination.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Young, and to thank the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, for supporting this amendment. It is something of the usual crew, and “Green Member gets up to support climate and biodiversity action” is, I know, not terribly original, but I just want to make a couple of specific points. One is that there was a climate reporting duty on local authorities until 2010, brought in by a previous Labour Government. This amendment is seeking to reinstate something that Labour Governments brought in.

Repeated calls have come from the Climate Change Committee, businesses and the independent net zero review for a statutory local duty on climate, which is what this amendment aims to introduce. The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, referred memorably to the “NERC Act”, a phrase I had not heard before; I think I will call it the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act, because it is perhaps a bit clearer. It links with the Environment Act 2021, and research on the implementation of it is clear—it exists but it is all terribly obscure, and people are not catching up with it. This amendment introduces something very clear and simple.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Young, said, this is a debate that we keep having, so let us bring in a climate duty. Your Lordships’ House has had some real success over the years in having impact on Bills. I can go back to the pensions dashboards Bill, which will predate quite a number of people sitting in this Chamber. It was the first Committee stage I ever worked on, and we were trying to get climate measurements into the pensions dashboard. We really need to get to the point where your Lordships’ House does not have to keep doing this Bill after Bill. I know the noble Lord is concerned about the rate of progress, but if the Government put this in at the start, we would save a lot of time in your Lordships’ House.

I want to make one other crucial point. Local authorities have clear statutory duties, including a growth duty under the Deregulation Act 2015. There is a real imbalance between the fact that they have this growth duty but not a duty to look after the environment, climate and nature. Whatever I may think about growth, if you do not have a healthy environment, if communities are being battered by heatwaves, floods and droughts and you are not doing the climate mitigation you need to do, then you are not going to get the growth. These two things have to fit together.

We are all well aware that different parties with different views are coming into local authorities now, but this is a communal responsibility. Loss of biodiversity does not stop at county or district boundaries; climate change does not stop there either. All local authorities must have the duty, so that everyone is looked after. We cannot allow some people a free ride.

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Moved by

[Baroness Young of Old Scone]

185F: After Clause 52, insert the following new Clause—
“Local plan compliance with Habitats Regulations assessmentsWhen developing a local plan, a local planning authority must consider whether the plan complies with the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 (S.I. 2017/1012) and conduct full environmental impact assessments for all sites being proposed as suitable for development.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to enable local plans to guide developers towards sites most appropriate for development and speed up and simplify the subsequent planning application process by conducting Habitats Regulations assessments at local plan stage, rather than individual planning application stage.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot give the House satisfaction by saying “Not moved”. Like my noble friend Lady Andrews, I feel that it is bad enough tabling amendments to your own Government’s Bill, but I am doing it when the whole House wants to go home. Also, all my supporters were expecting this to come up next week as part of the Part 3 discussions and have all gone off to do whatever it is that they are up to. My noble friend Lady Andrews has got the inside track on that. It really is a big order. I will try to be brief, but I actually regard these amendments as probably the most important ones that I have tabled to the whole Bill. Perhaps this debate can be regarded as a warm-up act for the main discussions on EDPs and the nature restoration fund next week.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, in his absence—I think that he is off fishing—for putting his name to my amendments. I am very grateful for that. These three amendments are a package, to be taken together, as they outline an alternative approach to Part 3 of the Bill by seeking to tackle the real blockages that are being experienced by developers, not by throwing the habitats regulations baby out with the bath-water but by streamlining the way they are implemented.

The habitats regulations have been portrayed as significant blockages to development and that needs a bit of unpicking. First, they cover only internationally important habitats and species that need and deserve the highest level of protection. Secondly, some see them as gold-plating by the European Union, but it was actually us Brits who invented the habitats regulations and negotiated them into the rest of Europe. They are pretty fundamental to the protection of those habitats and species that are the feedstock from which nature restoration is fed.

Thirdly, many developers and others are clear that nature issues are not actually the biggest cause of delays to development; they come quite a long way down the lists that developers have, behind the lack of planning, resources and skills in local planning authorities, behind the same problem in the various regulators and consultees and behind the inbuilt reluctance of developers to build out sites. We have extant planning permissions for 1.2 million homes that have not been built and we have heard tonight about delays that have happened as a result of CIL and Section 106. I gather that, at the moment, building safety requirements as a result of the Grenfell Tower event can delay planning permissions for up to a year. So it is not just the habs regs that are a problem, as is sometimes the impression you would get from Part 3 of the Bill.

I have put forward these amendments against that background of seeking to resolve these real problems, knowing that next week we will hear considerable and more detailed concerns from others about how EDPs and the nature restoration fund will work; and that is in spite of the very useful amendments that the Government have already put down following the Commons stages to meet the significant concerns expressed in the other place and to respond to the criticism by the Office for Environmental Protection that Part 3 represents a regression from current standards.

So I am not the only person concerned about the Part 3 proposals. Indeed, a recent legal opinion by David Elvin KC, subsequent to the laying of the government amendments, concluded that, even with these changes, Part 3 represents a regression on environmental standards that could be in breach of international law. That is the context.

I will briefly lay out these three simple amendments, which offer an alternative way forward. Amendment 242A would restrict EDPs to only those issues where approaches are required at a strategic landscape scale in order to be effective. These are issues of nutrient neutrality, water quality, water resources and air quality—the issues that developers are most worried about. EDPs would not be put in place for individual species issues. There are already good models, such as the newt district licensing scheme, which work and often involve leveraging private sector investment. These private sector investors already see EDPs as undermining their schemes and chilling investment. So development of further species schemes along those lines is perfectly possible.

Amendments 185F and 185G would tackle other concerns about the habitats regulations beyond the four priorities that are listed in Amendment 242A by moving the requirements to comply with the habitats regulations substantially upstream to spatial development strategies and local plans. This would mean that, by the time developers came forward with planning applications on specific sites, the heavy lifting of habs regs, surveys and assessments would have been done at the spatial strategy and local plan stage. This would have the added benefit of guiding developers towards the simplest sites for development, where there would be least opposition, reducing unnecessary conflict and simplifying the planning application phase considerably.

I have talked to developers, both housing and infrastructure, about these proposals, and to the environmental NGOs. They believe that they could be made to work. I beg to move.

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[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Young for her amendments on habitats regulations assessments. Amendment 185F seeks to ensure that local plans are in compliance with the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 and that the local authority preparing the plan carries out full environmental impact assessments when proposing sites for development. It is important that the environmental impacts of a local plan are properly assessed as part of their preparation, arrangements for which are set out in existing legislation.

All local plans are already required to undertake a habitats regulations assessment where they have the potential for impacts on a site or species protected under the regulations. In addition, all local plans are required to carry out an assessment incorporating the requirements of a strategic environmental assessment where a local plan will result in likely significant effects on the environment. This obligation is for a strategic environmental assessment rather than an environmental impact assessment, as the latter requires in-depth information about a specific development proposal—information that will not generally be available at the plan-making stage. However, any development that comes forward subsequent to the plan’s adoption that, due to its size, nature or location, is likely to have a significant effect on the environment will require an environmental impact assessment. With this reassurance about the way that environmental impacts are considered during plan preparation and in support of its implementation, I hope that my noble friend Lady Young will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

In Amendment 185G, my noble friend raises an important issue about how habitats regulations requirements will apply to the preparation of spatial development strategies. However, paragraph 12 of Schedule 3 to the Bill already applies the assessment requirements under the habitats regulations to spatial development strategies. This means that strategic planning authorities will be required to carry out habitats regulations assessments where necessary, bringing new spatial development strategies in line with the spatial development strategy for London. The proposed amendment would require full assessment of specific sites allocated within spatial development strategies, yet the Bill expressly does not allow them to allocate specific sites. It will therefore not be possible for strategic planning authorities to undertake habitats regulations assessments for specific sites as part of SDS preparation. This would need to happen, where needed, later in the planning process.

Amendment 242A would limit the scope of environmental delivery plans to a narrow list of environmental impacts on protected sites: namely, nutrient neutrality, water quality, water resource or air quality. I share my noble friend’s desire to ensure that EDPs are used only where they can be shown to deliver for the environment. This is why the Government sought to clarify their position in the recent government amendments, which highlight that the Secretary of State could make an EDP only where the conservation measures materially outweigh the negative effect of development on the relevant environmental feature. That ensures that EDPs could be brought forward only to address issues that would benefit from a strategic approach and would deliver an environmental uplift that goes beyond the status quo position required under the current system.

With the assurance that an EDP would be made only where it would deliver that environmental uplift, we feel it is right to allow EDPs to be brought forward to address the range of environmental impacts set out in the Bill. Limiting types of environmental impacts that EDPs can address would remove the ability for EDPs to respond to other environmental impacts that may result from development, where a strategic approach could deliver in line with the overall improvement test, especially to protected species. With that explanation, I hope the noble Baroness will agree to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and the Opposition Front Bench for their support for my amendments. The Minister has expressed concerns that environmental impact assessments can happen only when there is a specific site concerned. I have some detailed working papers that I can provide to Ministers, and talk them through, showing how that could be bridged to do the maximum amount of work on a preparatory basis at local plan level before any final touches were applied when a site was up for proposal. Perhaps I could share those next week.

On the overall improvement test, the reality is that it is probably possible to demonstrate—although I have not had time tonight—that the process of overall improvement and the issues that would be most amenable to that are going to be the things that can be resolved only on a strategic basis at landscape scale. We are arguing from two ends of the same spectrum, really: the Government are saying that EDPs apply to everything but that they have to meet these tests, which would actually restrict the things that EDPs could be used for, while I am arguing that we probably know right now what the restrictions would be, so why not put those in the Bill? I am sure we will come to resolve some of these issues when we have the real run at these points next week.

My message is simple. Let us make sure we are focusing on the real blockages. Let us recognise that Part 3 has flaws. Let us take my three simple steps, with some of the elaboration that I have promised. Let us reduce conflict, reduce costs and speed development. But at the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 185F withdrawn.