Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Baroness Young of Old Scone and Lord Stunell

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, although perhaps I would not want to align myself with my friend’s sentiments about the complexity of the Covid rules currently being examined at the other end, I support this group of amendments.

Net zero and adaptation to the impacts of climate change are getting more and more difficult because they are more and more pressing. We have to deploy every tool in the toolbox, and the planning system is a pretty powerful tool if it is properly pointed. It is true to say that the National Planning Policy Framework requires local authorities to address climate change, but when push comes to shove, housing targets tend to get the upper hand. If a local authority lays stringent requirements on developers about net zero or adaptation to the impacts of climate change, the viability test immediately gets rolled out, as well as challenges about developments being not viable under the rules that the local authority is laying down. Local authorities have to have some sort of protection against that kind of challenge, by being able to point to strong guidance and a statutory requirement to deliver net zero and adaptation to climate change.

As my noble friend on our Front Bench said, it is good that a large number of local authorities have declared a climate emergency, but they now need help to make that reality. There are already a few hooks in planning legislation that local authorities ought to be able to rely on, but they are clearly not sufficient because planning inspectors are overturning development proposals and local plans on the basis that the planning authorities have gone too far. We have to make sure that they are not going to be subject to those sorts of local challenges for doing the things that need to be done to tackle this emergency.

These amendments have some considerable strength. As has been said, they deal not just with plans but with planning policy, and indeed with individual applications. They talk not just about net zero but about the very real need for local planning authorities to take pretty stringent steps to ensure that there is adequate adaptation to climate change on a local basis.

If noble Lords really want to break their hearts some evening, they should go and read the successive reports of the Adaptation Committee of the Climate Change Committee, very nobly chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Cambridge, who is not in her place. It would break your heart to see how little progress we have made in making our local settlements, infrastructure, and other important things for the quality of life and of the economy in this country resilient in the face of climate change. We really have to get a grip of that one.

Other excellent features of the amendments are that they cover climate change and nature, and are about mitigation actions, as well as adaptation. It would be extremely helpful to planning authorities, developers, and those who care about climate change and climate adaptation for these amendments, or some variant of them, to be accepted at Report.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I support these amendments and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, for bringing them in front of noble Lords today. I want to focus on just one aspect of this. It is about not just whether the Government agree to these amendments and facilitate all the action which noble Lords have already spoken about but whether they back away from the current position, which is putting a ceiling on the ambition of local planning authorities in achieving net zero, and indeed in trying to set a purpose that is in any way in alignment with the nationally set targets of getting to zero carbon by 2050.

Many local authorities are straining at the leash to make their communities zero carbon and to ensure that they take steps to protect the well-being of their residents from flooding and extreme weather events, and from the costs and harm that they can see happening now and foresee coming in the coming decade or two if they do not take vigorous action to tackle climate change and mitigate the worst consequences of it. Unfortunately, time and again, via the Planning Inspectorate or government pronouncements, local planning authorities are prevented from taking those actions by the imposition of a national framework which is not in alignment with the equally national statutory framework to reach zero carbon by 2050.

If the Minister feels that, somehow or other, the formulation of the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, is not the right one, that is fine, but can she, in the first instance, say that she and her Government will not continue to deliberately suppress the ambition of local authorities to achieve that national target and come forward herself, or encourage her Government to come forward, with a way to facilitate progress along the lines the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, has so well set out today?