Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Fourteenth sitting)

David Simmonds Excerpts

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Gideon Amos]

I will be brief as we come to the last couple of new clauses that we on the Liberal Democrat Benches wish to speak to today. I was speaking to new clause 101, which relates to playing fields. Fields in Trust is a charity that helps to protect playing fields and green spaces. Its public green space index is a way to track change over time, and it consistently finds inequality of access: one in three children do not have a playground close to home and 6.3 million people live more than 10 minutes away in walking time from a green space.

The new clause would place a duty on local planning authorities to protect playing fields and pitches from development. In March this year—a couple of months ago—the Government announced that some organisations, including Sport England, will no longer be statutory consultees on planning decisions, in order to speed up development. The press release states:

“The NPPF is clear that existing open spaces, sports, recreational buildings and land, including playing fields, should not be built on unless an assessment has shown the space to be surplus to requirements or it will be replaced by equivalent or better provision.”

The Government argued that such protections were sufficient, but Sport England states that:

“from 2022-23 alone it protected more than 1,000 playing fields across the country.”

That was in a Guardian article where it was reported that thousands of playing fields may be lost. The protections in the NPPF are therefore not sufficient. The effect of removing Sport England as a statutory consultee can only be to speed up development on playing fields.

Sport England has also stated that

“it responds to over 98% of applications within 21 days and that in 70% of statutory applications it does not object.”

There is not a source of unnecessary delay as a result of Sport England being involved in the process. If those provisions are being removed, then the Government need to put in place more robust legal provisions for playing fields. The new clause would do that so that important community assets are not lost.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

I will be brief: the issues in new clause 111, which it is my privilege to speak to, have already been extensively debated. We have just heard about protections in respect of playing fields; new clause 111 is about protections in respect of villages. Those are relevant to places such as Harefield in my constituency—pretty much the last village in London—and to the concerns highlighted by many Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking), about some recent decisions on infilling, which puts the separation of villages from nearby towns at some degree of risk. We are keen to preserve it. We will press the new clause to a vote in due course.

[Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)]

I rise in support of the important new clause 111, in the name of the shadow Minister. I have six villages in my patch—Goffs Oak, Hertford Heath, Brickendon, Great Amwell, St Margarets and Stanstead Abbotts—all of which have a unique character. We need to protect village life; villages are all unique and different. The new clause is not saying that we do not want any development in villages—of course, to make progress, there has to be developmentbut people in villages in my constituency, and probably across the country, are fearful of having loads of development so that villages all get connected up together and lose their rural identity, village community and spirit.

I would like the Government to really consider the new changes they have made to the national planning policy framework, particularly on villages. As I said, when we drive throughout the country, probably through hundreds of villages, we know they are all unique and have a different character. We should try to maintain that, rather than having an urban sprawl, with no green spaces left and developments that all link together. I fully support the new clause in the shadow Minister’s name.