Draft Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2026

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2026 General Committees

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Jardine. It is not the first time I have done so as part of a Committee to discuss planning regulations—I am sure, Ms Jardine, that you look forward to debating these as much as I do.

The Liberal Democrats are sympathetic to the need for strategic planning and welcome its being rolled out for strategic authorities; we made that point during the passage of the Bill. However, we also made the point that we should not load this requirement on to hard-pressed unitary authorities. For example, my local authority in Somerset is struggling to begin an enormous and expensive local plan exercise, under which it would be required to find a 46% increase in the number of housing plots in Somerset, which is 75,000 plots all together. It is not reasonable to, at the same time, expect county councils or unitary authorities, acting on their own, to begin work on a spatial development strategy.

I understand that in the regulations there is a provision for authorities to combine to achieve that—indeed, Somerset council is trying to combine. It is part of the Wessex partnership, but the partnership’s bid for mayoral status was pushed back by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, so it is unable to form a mayoral strategic authority. Therefore, Somerset council, like many other county councils and unitary authorities around the country, will be expected to undertake the work. Although we support the spirit of there being spatial development strategies for strategic authorities, we are unable to support the regulations, given the huge extra burden on county councils and unitary authorities, as we raised during the passage of the Bill.

In addition, we do not feel that the regulations have a sufficiently “brownfield first” approach. During the passage of the Bill, we also highlighted the lack of any statutory right to be heard in the plan-making process. The SDS gives us further cause for concern about the implementation of that aspect of the Planning and Infrastructure Act.