Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Eleventh sitting)

Lee Pitcher Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th May 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Matthew Pennycook]

Clause 80 seeks to ensure that all types of development corporation must aim to contribute to sustainable development, climate change mitigation and adaption, and good design. The delivery of large-scale development and regeneration projects is vital to boost the housing supply, as I just mentioned. We must ensure, however, that large-scale new communities are delivered sustainably, with care for our climate, and that they have good design and quality at their heart.

Currently, only new town development corporations are required to aim to contribute to sustainable development and have regard to the desirability of good design. The current legislative framework does not require any development corporation model to contribute to climate change mitigation and adaption. Clause 80 will change that by amending current legislation to ensure that all development corporations must aim to contribute to sustainable development, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and good design.

Through the changes, we will create certainty for local communities that development corporations working in their areas will put sustainable development, climate change, and good design at the heart of delivery. I commend the simple, straightforward and, I hope, uncontroversial clause to the Committee.

[Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)]

I want to express my absolute support for this clause. I chair the all-party parliamentary water group and the APPG for sustainable flood and drought management, and prior to my time in this place, I worked in the world of design and engineering around the climate, so this is an important issue for me. I support sustainable urban drainage systems, especially after this April and May, as it looks like we will have had the driest spring in 100 years. We need to consider what we are doing on developments about drought, with grey water recycling, and we need to look at how we address future flood risk and build resilience in new towns—and existing ones as well. I am happy to see this measure in the Bill.

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

It is a pleasure to serve on this Committee with you in the Chair, Ms Jardine. I, too, rise to support this clause, but I note that here we will mitigate “and” adapt to climate change, whereas in the spatial development strategies, we will mitigate “or” adapt to climate change. Without wishing to nit-pick, I feel that point needs to be made.