Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Carrington of Fulham Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 4th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sater (Con)]

My Lords, I will briefly support my noble friend Lord Moynihan’s important Amendment 99AA. The role of training can never be underestimated, and the importance and consistency of knowledge and skills introduced by training is very important. There is no statutory protection for playing fields, parks or playgrounds, and people are extremely concerned about the potential loss of the playing fields and parks in their communities. These open spaces are critical to preserve if we can because, once they are gone, we cannot get them back.

Diminishing any existing levels of scrutiny, especially with Sport England’s role as a consultee potentially being relinquished, could further impact the loss of our sports fields and physical activity spaces and facilities. We have heard from my noble friend Lord Moynihan about the desperate state of our swimming pools and sports centres.

A study by the Fields in Trust charity quantified the well-being value of parks and green spaces at £34 billion per annum. Frequently using these spaces results in better general health and reduced need to go to the GP, quantified as saving the NHS £111 million every year. It certainly goes a long way to help the NHS and it gets people, especially young people, active, playing sport and outdoors.

Work done by other organisations, including Fields in Trust and ukactive, is vital to sport and physical activity in this country. Training all members of local planning authorities and including an emphasis on healthy place-making, which includes planning adequate provision of sport and physical activity spaces and facilities, will help greatly to ensure that we have open spaces for sport and physical activity for future generations.

My noble friend Lord Moynihan said that this is his first of many amendments to several Bills. I will support him and would like to hear from others about these critical issues that will affect us in future. This amendment is important to ensure that planning officers have the skills and knowledge to deliver the planning outcomes that our local communities really need.

[Lord Carrington of Fulham (Con)]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, in his Amendment 99A on the training of planning officers to improve the environment and the appearance of the built environment. This is extremely important for lots of reasons, one of which is, obviously, that anything that makes our streetscapes more beautiful is to be encouraged. But it is more fundamentally important than that.

If we are to manage to build, as this Government tell us they will—previous Governments made the same claim—300,000 new homes every year, we will need to get local support for the homes to be built in local areas. In other words, it is no good trying to impose housing developments, new towns or whatever from the outside, without support from the local community. Local community support will be heavily dependent on the appearance of the development. If it fits in with the classic way of building in that local area, it is more likely to be accepted. If the buildings are diverse and beautiful, they are much more likely to be welcomed. If they end up being ticky-tacky little boxes all looking the same, I have to say that local opposition will be stirred up and might well be brought to a frenzy.