English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Lewis Cocking and Paul Holmes

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th September 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Paul Holmes]

Q I am pleased that you have mentioned the GLA, Ms Riddell, because it relates to a question that I want to ask you both.

Mr Fletcher, you are absolutely right to say that this, as well as local government reorganisation, was not in the governing party’s manifesto. I therefore think that it is right that we try to make the policy work as best we can through scrutiny mechanisms such as this Committee. In London, there are structural and spatial planning powers and business powers that are currently operable and invested in the GLA and the London mayoralty. For example, the GLA has a scrutinising mechanism and a housing role, and the mayor has business retention powers and spatial planning powers.

We have seen housing delivery fall under the current administration in London, and we have seen recent announcements that London is essentially a no-go investment area for many relevant organisations. Given the—I would argue—perceived failure in policy delivery in London, what lessons can we learn when the Government are attempting to replicate a structure in London that is not working elsewhere?

Ion Fletcher: In general terms, it is helpful that London has its London plan and its spatial development strategy. The London plan was also the first to acknowledge the important role of build-to-rent housing—housing developed and managed specifically for rental purposes—and was a pioneer in protecting logistics in industrial space, so it does have those positives.

The other side of the coin is that the London plan, in the view of our members, has become too long and too repetitive of policies that already exist either at a national level or at a local borough level. One of our members recently did some analysis and worked out that you could consolidate or eliminate roughly half the policies in the London plan in the latest iteration, so there is definitely scope for simplification. The lesson I would draw is that the new strategic authority should be focusing on the strategic stuff rather than getting too much into the development control side of things, which ultimately adds uncertainty and cost to the planning process.

Catriona Riddell: I totally agree. The national decision-making policies that will soon come forward will help to strip out a lot of what is in the London plan. The idea behind spatial development strategies—this new model—is that they will be very high-level, they will not be very long, and they certainly will not be the London plan model. There is still a difference in terms of governance and decision making in London, and there still will be after the Bill. The decision making for the spatial development strategy in London—the London plan—sits with the mayor. I think a two-thirds majority of the GLA is needed to overturn that, whereas under the strategic authorities it would be a majority vote in most cases. There is a difference with the mayors under the Bill, and other places will have less power.

One of the challenges for London and many other parts of the country is that the planning system has been overburdened with a lot of red tape and regulation that sits not within planning, but within building control or other regulatory systems. That has been one of the big blockages for the market in London. There is no doubt that that has had a knock-on impact right across the board. Stripping out some of the regulation that does not sit within planning, and making planning simpler, will help. I think the London plan has changed things significantly; in its 25 years, it has shown that it has actually been able to deliver. I do not think that it is the London plan that is the problem; it is the delivery end of things, which the mayor is facing at the moment. That is where the challenge is.

[Lewis Cocking]

Q I want to continue down the planning route. You mentioned utility companies earlier; I completely agree that we need to get them around the table. What about the NHS and health services? How well are they are getting around the table at the moment, and what do you think the Bill will do to strengthen that? Lots of people are not necessarily anti-development, but they are anti-development when it does not come with any services that the community needs.

Catriona Riddell: I am a very strong supporter of the Bill’s “health in all policies” approach. Mayors and strategic authorities will have to demonstrate how they will improve health inequalities and others through everything they do. Many will know that the planning system is embedded in health; that is how it came about. We have been trying very hard to make sure that local plans and the new spatial development strategies address health. That is not just about infrastructure, but about healthy places generally.

As you know, it is a real challenge at the local level to plan for health infrastructure up front. Most of that will still be done at the local plan level, not the SDS level, but the SDS level will have to look at strategic infrastructure around health. If any major new health infrastructure is needed, that will have to be embedded into the SDS. As with all the work of strategic authorities, it is not just about a planning responsibility; the strategic authority will be working with the health authorities, and they will need to have a role in how the SDSs deal with health. The Liverpool city region is a great example of working with health authorities and others to embed health into the spatial development strategy that it is preparing at the moment, so it can be done.

It is much more difficult to find the answer for local infrastructure such as doctors’ surgeries and GPs. I know there are examples where land has been left aside for doctors’ surgeries, but GPs and others have not moved forward to make it happen. I guess there are more challenges in health infrastructure outside the planning system, but getting them at the table up front, in terms of in spatial development strategies and the flow-through to local plans, is absolutely the right thing.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Eighth sitting)

Debate between Lewis Cocking and Paul Holmes

Committee stage
Wednesday 14th May 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Paul Holmes]

I genuinely thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. She has clearly examined the Bill, which is such a big piece of legislation—in the right way. I simply say that an examination of and consultation on the creation of a spatial development strategy would not always have what people want in it, or do not want in it, as its ultimate end goal once the draft has been put together. When a draft spatial strategy has been put together, people should be able to have their say on it.

The hon. Lady will know from her previous career, as I do from mine, that when people want to have their say on something in a consultation that an authority proposes, some will be happy—maybe they are getting what they want from it—but some will never be happy. They will always want to grumble; we have all had a few of those in our inboxes. However, we believe it is right that once something as key and new as these strategies is brought together, local people should be able to have their say.

The hon. Lady is absolutely right that there is a requirement on strategic planning authorities to consult prior and during. We are saying that once the draft strategy is put forward, it is crucial that local people have their chance to have a say. If a strategic planning authority is confident that it has made the right decision on a local development based on the consultations it has already done, it should not be scared or hindered by a consultation to see what happens in respect of the finished product.

[Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)]

The shadow Minister is making some eloquent points. Does he agree that if the Government are intent on bringing in a national scheme of delegation, and changing the role of the planning committee and how councillors interact with the planning process, even more consultation should be done at the stages he is describing so that we can ensure that residents still get their say over development in their area?

[Paul Holmes]

Yes. We had a significant debate yesterday on what I said was the Government’s centralising zeal in taking powers away from locally elected politicians. Many Opposition Members agree with me. The Opposition tabled an amendment that would not have allowed to go ahead something as large-scale being put together by a strategic planning authority, created by the Government, but the Minister won. We believe people should be consulted.

As I said to the hon. Member for North Warwickshire and Bedworth, it is vital that when there is a democratic deficit—we fundamentally believe that one is being created by other aspects of the Bill—local people should have the right to be consulted on the end product. That is why I say this to the Minister, slightly cheekily, but with a serious undertone. As I said in a Westminster Hall debate, he is the forward-looking planner of our time, and I know he gets embarrassed about these things—he is blushing—but nobody in the House of Commons is more deserving of the role of Housing Minister. He worked hard on the role in opposition, and he comes from a space of wanting to reform the system. We accept that, but sometimes his reforms have consequences, and if those reforms are so good, he should not be afraid to allow the people who elected him to his place and the Government to their place to have their say on something as radical as this change.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Seventh sitting)

Debate between Lewis Cocking and Paul Holmes

Committee stage
Wednesday 14th May 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Lewis Cocking]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I rise in support of amendments 72, 75 and 82. I await with anticipation what the Minister will say, because surely we can all agree that green belt should be protected and that we should do brownfield first. Sometimes, under the current planning system, green-belt land gets developed on through the back door.

Even if a council has an up-to-date local plan, there can be issues if it does not meet its five-year land supply or housing targets in terms of its build-out rates, which the council has very little control over. The council has control over the speed and determination of planning applications. However, it can approve all the applications it wants—it could approve thousands—but if the developer or developers are not building them, the council then gets punished. Someone else will come along and say, “I want to develop on this piece of green-belt land,” and when that goes to appeal, the Planning Inspectorate will say to the council, “You haven’t got a five-year land supply, and you’re not meeting your build-out rate targets.” It is the community and the council that get punished for developers not building what they have been given approval to build.

[Paul Holmes]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In relation to previous comments that have been made about building on green belt through the back door, does he agree that these amendments strengthen the case for some of those councils? The current planning appeals system takes into regard national guidelines and national legislation, and these amendments provide a safeguard to stop some of those things happening.

[Lewis Cocking]

My hon. Friend makes a pertinent point, and I completely agree. We should do anything we can to strengthen councils’ hands in protecting green belt. I suspect there is broad support for brownfield-first and protecting the green belt.

I turn to amendment 82, tabled by the shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie). A wider failure of the planning system is that it does not account for the cumulative impact of lots of planning decisions. This amendment goes some way to protecting farmland. It may be appropriate for a field to be developed for a specific farming purpose, but if there is lots of development in farming areas in a specific location and the planning committee does not take into account the cumulative impact, there can be negative consequences—for example, where a floodplain is built on and that creates issues for the field next door.

The Government need to grapple with this wider issue of the cumulative impact of lots of development. At the moment, planning committees judge the planning application in front of them and do not necessarily look at the cumulative impact. I hope the Government will support our amendments, in particular amendment 82, which tries to rectify some of those cumulative impacts in order to protect our agricultural land, which is very important for our food security.