Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Ellie Chowns Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 24th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, you will know that I always like to start by emphasising where there is common ground and agreement, so that we can start off on a positive foot. I do agree that there is a housing crisis. I do agree that we need to build more homes. We need to tackle the outrageous inequality in the housing market and the fact that there are nearly 1 million empty homes, as well as 1.5 million for which there is planning permission but that are, as yet, unbuilt. We need to build more homes—the right home in the right place at the right price, though—and I am not sure the Bill goes far enough to address those concerns.

There are more areas of agreement. I agree we need to reform planning. I agree we need a strategic approach. I agree we need to tackle the issues of hope value, community benefit from energy infrastructure, and planning fees—so many areas of agreement. [Interruption.] I can see the Minister is smiling. [Interruption.] No, I am not going to stop there; sorry!

However, there are a number of areas of missed opportunity, as well as fairly deep concern. Currently, the Bill has no content on a range of important planning aspects. It does not contain any measures to secure affordable, healthy homes, or to ensure that the planning system is fully joined up with our climate and nature obligations. There is not even a statement of a positive visionary purpose for the planning system, and it is so important to provide the framework for what we are doing here. We need clarification that development should be sustainable, benefiting future generations as well as meeting today’s needs.

We need joined-up policy: a new climate and nature duty on all planning authorities to ensure that all policies tackle our Climate Change Act 2008 and Environment Act 2021 obligations. Planning is crucial for tackling the climate crisis and reducing the environmental impact of new development. We need solar panels on roofs and high levels of insulation. There is nothing here on zero-carbon heating or embodied carbon. There is also nothing on climate adaptation. I find it quite extraordinary that in 160 pages there is not a single mention of the words flood or flooding, yet they are crucial to planning and infrastructure. We need to ensure that the Bill plans for active and public transport. Let us see a “no net new traffic growth” test applied to all developments, so we incentivise the shift to active and public transport.

The Bill should include a nature duty. It provides a great opportunity to specify wildlife-friendly design, swift bricks—I have talked about them previously—hedgehog highways and green roofs. Let us have a new chapter of the building regulations specifically on biodiversity.

I recognise that environmental delivery plans could be useful in some cases, but I worry that they may be a bit too much of a blanket approach. What is suitable for newts is not necessarily suitable for all aspects of wildlife and landscape. I have a little concern that we are effectively outsourcing the environmental obligations of developers to Natural England, without requiring sufficient attention to be paid to those issues. For example, the removal of site-specific survey requirements means we will effectively be shooting in the dark when we specify what remedies need to be taken.

We need to legally guarantee that nature benefits will significantly outweigh any harm. We need to follow the mitigation hierarchy, strengthen protection for irreplaceable habitats such as the ancient woodlands and chalk streams that have been mentioned, and remove the viability test for the nature restoration levy. Otherwise, there is a real risk that developers will altogether escape paying for the nature restoration that they should do.

We need to ensure accessibility standards and affordability standards—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. I call Joe Powell.