New Housing: Swift Bricks

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Caroline Lucas

Monday 10th July 2023 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Nokes]

The hon. Lady makes a really important point about new developments, as indeed did my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers). However, could swift bricks not also be a planning requirement for extensions? In a cost of living crisis, many people might not be able to afford to move, and they might need to enlarge their homes, so if a new brick is going in, there is no difficulty in making it a swift one.

[Caroline Lucas]

I entirely agree with the right hon. Lady. With a bit of imagination, we could really make a difference, and hers is a very good suggestion.

I urge Ministers to act with urgency and, for example, to bring forward an amendment to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill to make this law. That step has been endorsed by many Members of all parties, the director of the Conservative Environment Network and former Government Ministers. It is not often that one points to such cross-party support for any kind of proposal, and this proposal has that cross-party support and could be easily put in place.

Let me say a few words about Brighton, because as hon. Members would expect, it is leading the way on this issue, as on so many others. Since June 2020, any building over 5 metres is mandated to include swift bricks, and the county ecologist has recommended specific requirements for major developments. That follows the redevelopment of the former site of Brighton General Hospital, which was home to the second largest colony of swifts in the south of England. The swifts had been using old and decaying ventilator bricks and other gaps in the walls as nesting holes. Of course, any repairs to the holes would have rendered them unsuitable for the swifts, so swift boxes were retrofitted into the building. They matched the existing brickwork and conformed to British brick standards, which meant that the boxes and bricks could seamlessly fit into the design of the building. The project is now being seen as a flagship example of swift provision. I pay tribute to conservationists in Brighton and Hove, including Heather Ball, who have worked so hard to make our city more swift-friendly. Local swift groups have been inspecting new developments to find out whether they adhere to the rules.

I want to take a moment to challenge some of the arguments in the Government’s response to the petition. I very much hope that they will change their response. They say that although they welcome action by developers to provide swift bricks, they consider this

“a matter for local authorities depending upon the specific circumstances of each site”,

and that they therefore “will not be legislating” to mandate specific types of infrastructure. That is a massive wasted opportunity. It would take such a small thing to mandate the measure nationally, and we know that not enough local authorities have done it and that it would take a long time for each one to come to a local plan and start to mandate it. This measure would have huge support and could be driven appropriately from the centre. Instead, the Government have pointed to planning conditions that local authorities can impose and the introduction of new local nature recovery strategies. Although some local authorities mention swift bricks in their guidance for local plans, only a handful have made it a condition for new housing, and although local recovery strategies may identify swift bricks as important, there is currently no legal link into the planning system.

A legal duty to include swift bricks in all new developments is essential to deliver the new level of action that is required to save our swifts. As the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) mentioned, there are also ways that we could extend that duty to extensions and other moments when people do work on their homes. The hon. Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) has already quoted the RSPB, which quite clearly demolished the idea that swift bricks can sometimes be inappropriate, so I hope that the Government will not keep saying that. Instead, let us see a change on this as soon as possible.

Time is not on our side. As I have said time and again in this House, the UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, with a staggering 15% of species now at risk of extinction. Swift bricks and swift boxes are important, but they are far from enough. Nature is under assault from every angle—from our intensive agricultural system, which douses our fields in poison, to ancient woodlands being destroyed to make way for roads and railways, and water companies incessantly pumping sewage into our waterways. If we are to have any chance of changing that terrifying picture, we must start by quite literally making a home for nature—by living once again with a species that has long been our closest neighbour.

If the swift goes, it will be its own tragedy, but it will also be symbolic of so much else. The author, naturalist and campaigner Mark Cocker has just written a wonderful book about swifts, which I warmly commend, called “One Midsummer’s Day”. He writes:

“The declines are profoundly troubling but they are important in an additional sense. They are part of the birds’ deeper capacity to serve as symbols for all life. For this in truth is a deeply troubled planet…Until now we have seemed unwilling to educate ourselves, or to feel in our deepest core, that life is a single unitary whole: that all parts are fused inextricably within a self-sustaining, mutually giving, mutually dependent, live fabric”.

If we were truly to live as if that were true, we would know that taking care of nature is a way of taking care of ourselves and all the other species with which we are so privileged to share this one precious planet.

Mandating the use of swift bricks in new buildings is one of the smallest and simplest steps we could take, but it would symbolise so much more. It would be that first step, but it would also be a symbol of our recognition of deeper interconnectedness. It is a step I hope that the Government take, and I hope that all Government Members who have spoken so strongly about the importance of swift bricks will carry that passion into future debates about things like industrialised agriculture, which is sadly destroying precious nature and is such a force for ill.