Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 6th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Northbrook (Con)]

My Lords, I am not quite sure why the Control of Pollution Act is put in the same group as swifts. Anyway, my Amendment 282 is in this group.

My local authority, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, unlike some local planning authorities, refuses to impose by planning condition any requirement on developers to mitigate noise, dust and vibration during construction work in accordance with an improved construction method statement that the developer is routinely obliged to submit as part of its planning application for a major development. Instead, with respect to such developments, it promises to encourage developers to submit applications for prior consent under Section 61 of the Control of Pollution Act 1974, failing which it promises that the council will issue a Section 60 notice.

These consents and notices create legal obligations on the developers but the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea can take action only if a breach has been notified. However, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea does not publish the consents and notices anywhere on its website or even the fact that a notice has been issued or a consent agreed to. As a result, residents are not aware whether or when a notice has been issued, what measures a developer has promised to take, what the obligations are under the notice or whether an obligation has been breached. They therefore cannot notify the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea that a breach has occurred. As a result, the system is rendered useless.

My proposed solution is simply that local planning authorities should be obliged to publish all such consents and notices on their planning websites promptly upon issue and not remove them. In the other place, the Minister’s response was that Section 69 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 requires local planning authorities to keep a register of applications. The Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 requires that these registers contain parts 3 and 4 containing details of local development orders and neighbourhood development orders respectively. Part 3, for instance, must include copies of any draft development orders that have been prepared but not adopted by the local planning authority and any adopted local development orders.

The Minister’s reply in the other place completely missed the point. Notices issued under Section 60 and consents given under Section 61 of the Control of Pollution Act are not planning applications or local or neighbourhood development orders. The reply in this place from the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, in Committee showed that she did not seem to understand what the amendment was seeking to achieve or why. She said:

“Legislating for information to be published in a specific way would remove their ability to make decisions at local level, for little additional benefit”.


This is incorrect. It would not affect in any way local authorities’ ability to make decisions. She concluded, without explanation, that

“the Government believe the proposed amendment is unnecessary and cannot support it”.

On being pressed by my noble friend Lord Bellingham, she replied:

“Since this is a Defra lead, I will commit to write to my noble friend and share the answer with the rest of the Committee”.—[Official Report, 18/4/23; col. 577.]


She did not do so.

When an LPA imposes a planning condition to require compliance with an approved construction method statement, it is obliged by law to publish on its planning website the text of the condition and the fact that the condition has been imposed. No one argues that this removes or affects its ability to make a decision, nor have I ever seen it argued that there are any circumstances in which it would be justifiable to keep the imposition of a condition or its text secret. Measures whereby the developer promises to mitigate noise and disturbance during construction do not touch on privacy or national security. By analogy, I cannot think of any circumstances in which it would be justifiable for a local planning authority to keep the issue of a Section 60/61 notice or consent, or its contents, secret. The Government have not explained why keeping it secret might be justifiable, and that is why I tabled the amendment on Report.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests set out in the register. It was a delight to listen to my noble friends Lord Goldsmith and Lord Randall describe the importance of swift bricks to the preservation of this species and to stopping their decline. I am delighted to be able to support it.

Installing these bricks is an absolute no-brainer. They cost between £25 and £35. Last year, the big four housebuilders—just four of them, Barratt, Berkeley, Persimmon and Bellway—made profits of £2.749 billion. I am sure they can afford a £25 brick for the 300,000 homes they might or might not manage to build next year. Installing the bricks is a no-brainer.

I learned today—I hope, wrongly—that the Government may be opposed to this measure. That, too, would be a no-brainer if they are. I wonder where the opposition has come from. I hope they have not been lobbied by the Home Builders Federation—the organisation which lied, lied and lied again about the Government blocking the building of 145,000 homes because of nutrient neutrality. That was totally untrue. Of course, housebuilders are sitting on more than 1 million planning applications and are land-banking until they can release them gradually and make maximum profits. If that is legitimate, so be it, but let us not let them attack the Government for holding up housebuilding when it is not the Government doing it.

I understand that in the Commons the Government said they could not mandate this nationally and it must be left to local voluntary discretion. Housebuilding left to local voluntary discretion? You cannot build a house anywhere in the country without the Government almost dictating the colour of the curtains. Look at the national regulations on every aspect of housebuilding: electrics; plumbing; the type of cement; the way the damp-proof course is laid; the tiles and insulation. Nearly every mortal thing of importance in the house—the width of the doorways, the bannisters, the boilers you may install after 2030—is dictated by central government, and rightly so. I am not complaining about that, but I am complaining about the apparent hypocrisy if the Government I support are now saying “Oh, we can’t order every house to have a little brick installed because that is taking national government interference too far”. If that is the case, I think that is nonsense.

I know that some Government Ministers have already installed these bricks. They have done it voluntarily, without guidance. If it is good enough for some Ministers, quite rightly, to save swifts out of their own volition, then it should be quite right that the Government support a measure to impose this nationally.

If it is the case that the Government are opposed to this, I would really like to know where that opposition came from in government. If it is true then some idiot—an adviser, spad or civil servant, but hopefully not a Minister—has decided to oppose this. I exempt my noble friend the Minister, as this is an environmental matter and nothing to do with her brief, but why in the name of God should a Conservative Government oppose this?

In the first three years of this Government, under Michael Gove and George Eustice in environment, we made the biggest strides forward in environmental and nature protection that this country has ever seen, with the 25-year plan and the Environment Act. Now we could lose that good reputation because of a trivial thing if we oppose installing a 25-quid brick in a house wall to save swifts.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 221A on swift bricks, as your Lordships might expect. My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb has, in the terms of the noble Lord, Lord Randall, flown back from a nearby cavity just to be here for this debate, but she could not be here at the start, so your Lordships get me instead.

This is something that I have been talking about. I was on TalkTV, talking to Julia Hartley-Brewer about restoring biodiversity. I happened to mention swift bricks in that discussion and the presenter said in response, “Isn’t that just a small thing? Don’t we have to do much more?”. Of course that is true, but, if you are a swift then a swift brick is not a small thing. The fact that you need somewhere to make your home and raise your young is a matter of life and death. As the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, said, there has been a 60% decline in the population in the last 25 years. These beautiful and utterly amazing creations of nature depend on having a place to rest and raise their young, and we are closing those spaces off.

The noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, also made an important point about human well-being—how much we all benefit from having swifts around and what a wonderful addition they are to our environment. Think about young people, such as the toddler who says, “What’s that?”, and has it explained so that they learn more. That is crucial.

The state of our biodiversity is absolutely parlous. We are one of the worst corners of this planet for nature. As we heard passionately from the Benches opposite, surely the Government cannot oppose this—they cannot oppose what was said by MPs in the other place and is being said by so many petitioners. Please let us have some common sense here.