Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Crisp Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, I shall be very brief, as nearly everything has been said very much more eloquently than I would have done in support of Amendment 149. I have scrapped most of what I was going to say.

I just add that we talk about the benefits of being grounded. There are few better ways of achieving that than working with the soil, the weather and the seasons on an allotment. However, that privilege can be enjoyed only if there is an area accessible to cultivate. The allotment movement in the UK is a long-standing tradition and it should not be squeezed out simply to create more spaces to put houses on in a limited area.

I would go a little further than this amendment. The allocation of area should reflect the number of houses and the expected population. Currently, allotments are included in the 10% biodiversity net gain requirement, which is completely different from allotments. There is some overlap, but it is a different requirement. I ask whichever Minister is going to cover this whether they agree that we need some sort of metric within the planning system that says: “x population; y land allocated for allotments”—otherwise we are just in the land of good intentions, and we know where they lead.

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, I will add three completely new points from a health perspective, and one that may I think have been covered.

The first point is that we are going through a major transition in thinking about health and in the way to create health and prevent diseases. People may well be aware that the links between nature and health and activity have been known for years, going back to the Greeks—and one could quote them. The key difference today, which I think has not yet come out yet, is the quality of the evidence that we have about that impact. It is due to researchers, including my noble friend Lady Willis, that we now understand the physiological evidence about the impact—how being in nature actually affects the body, and the biological mechanism behind this. Importantly, as the noble Baroness has shown herself and as she quoted earlier, there is evidence that green space in urban areas is even more important than in rural areas. That is the first really significant point—that the quality of evidence is now there.

The second point is that the health system is starting to act on that quality of evidence. If I say that the evidence for this is now as good as for many medicines, based on the same sort of considerations and published in the same sort of journals, there is no reason why we should not be thinking, as many people are, about how we go beyond pills. I need just to state a very simple point —that last year alone 8 million people were prescribed anti-depressants. That is an astonishing number, and this is one area where one might well think that being in nature and the activities involved would have an impact.

The third area I want to point to is government policy. It is very clear, is it not, that the new NHS plan, with its transitions from hospital to community and treatment to prevention, describes that it needs to create the sort of healthy environments that this amendment and others in this group envisage. I should have said at the beginning that I have put my name to Amendment 206 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, which I am particularly speaking to. There are some very strong health considerations here that are different from those that have been around before. There is policy, there is evidence and there is action actually starting to happen within our health systems. It seems to me that, if this Government have the ambition to leave the country in a better place than they found it—beyond simply numbers of housing units—then they need to catch this tide and make sure that there is implementation and that we are creating healthy homes and neighbourhoods.

I shall add one final point, which has already been mentioned, about the importance of allotments and of growing—the importance not just of being engaged with nature and physical activity but of being engaged in social networks and in the activity that surrounds that. These things come together to create healthy neighbourhoods and at the heart of it are the sorts of measures that have been set forward in all these amendments.

[Lord O’Donnell (CB)]

My Lords, I follow the noble Lord, my former colleague, as someone who has championed the idea that well-being should be the goal of government, and also as a former Permanent Secretary to the Treasury—I think I will take a slightly different slant on a number of these things. First, the evidence that green spaces make a big impact on well-being and mental health is huge, far beyond what has been said here. If one looks at the book by our own noble Lord, Lord Layard, one will find, on pages 237 to 239, a good analysis of this. There is a lot of economic evidence that looks at the difference between house prices where you have green spaces and where you do not, and looks at what we call hedonic price indices. The interesting part of that is that the price differences underestimate the impact of the green space on the well-being of the occupants—it is even bigger than those economic numbers would suggest, so I am a massive fan of taking account of the well- being effects in planning of what we do.

The Permanent Secretary to the Treasury says to me, “Yes, but let’s be very careful about unintended consequences here”. If we end up with lovely inner city green spaces with allotments and all the rest of it that no one can afford, all the poor will end up in the only places they can afford and they will end up with more commuting time, which is extremely bad for their well-being and their mental health—and then we will have problems. There is a solution to this, which I hope the Minister will take on board. The Treasury has a wonderful thing called the Green Book supplementary guidance on well-being, which can actually analyse all those things. I am prepared to bet that doing more on green spaces would give us a big net benefit. However, I do not know, and without that analysis of the unintended consequences on housing supply—where it is and the distributional impact—who knows? All I would stress is: please get the Treasury guys to do some work on this, using the latest estimates, because I think it will strongly back up your case.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Crisp]

123: After Clause 51, insert the following new Clause—
“Development plans to aim to improve health and well-being(1) Any national or local plan or strategy relating to the planning or development of an area must be designed to improve the physical, mental and social health and well-being of the people who are to reside in that area.(2) The Secretary of State must issue guidance to local planning authorities on how local plans and strategies can be designed to achieve the aims outlined in subsection (1).”Member's explanatory statement
This new clause would require national or local development plans to be designed in a way that aims to improve the physical, mental and social health and well-being of residents.

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to introduce this group of related amendments, which are all concerned with how planning in general and housing in particular can play a positive role in promoting mental, physical and social health and well-being, building what I would describe as a healthy and health-creating society.

The Minister will recognise some of the amendments in this group, which are very similar to ones that the now Government supported so effectively in opposition when I tabled them during the passage of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. I believe we even won a vote. While I hope she will support them, I suspect that she will not, and I understand that the Government have to choose. However, I hope that this debate will provide the Minister with more ammunition to argue for change within government. There are very good and powerful arguments behind the amendments in this group that I know will be set out by noble Lords. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and my noble friend Lord Carlile of Berriew for adding their names to my amendments. I also thank Hugh Ellis and Rosalie Callway of the TCPA for their invaluable advice and support.

Before turning to my own amendments, I add my support to the amendments on sport and physical activity from the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. They powerfully make the point about the importance of both. It is not just the activity involved that is important for health and well-being, but the social aspects it embodies.

Two of the amendments in this group, Amendment 132 from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and Amendment 185D from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, set out definitions of the purpose of planning. It is very important that we remember what this is all about: why planning is necessary. Both these definitions of planning surely include ensuring the health and well-being of the population and not damaging it. I am also delighted to support Amendment 185SA from the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, on a code of practice for design. This, as will be apparent in what I go on to say, is very important.

There are two overlapping arguments for my amendments. I will not repeat what I said at Second Reading, but I will touch on some of the points: the evidence from health research—the straightforward health arguments, if you like—and what I will call the evidence of experience, the salutary tales from recent history. Poorly planned neighbourhoods with poor amenities and badly designed homes with little or no access to nature, inadequate insulation of heat or against noise, and that are not secure or well-heated in winter or cool enough in summer, are a recipe for personal and societal stress and can be directly linked to risks of mental and physical illness and disease. Stress itself is implicated in increased inflammation and linked to many long-term conditions, from heart disease and diabetes to depression and anxiety. It is also very clear that the Minister’s colleagues in the Department of Health understand this very well. In the new NHS plan, there is reference to the importance of healthy neighbourhoods, and that is what all these amendments are designed to achieve.

Turning to the evidence from experience, the current housing system is too often failing to promote people’s physical, mental and social health, especially in the most deprived areas. Poor housing costs wider society at least £18.5 billion a year through poor educational achievement, loss of productivity and on-costs to health and care services, including £1.4 billion a year to the NHS.

Across the country, too many homes are being built that are poor quality, poorly located and unaffordable. A recent survey showed that a third of people across all sectors described their new homes as poor quality. Permitted development rights have only made that worse.

I have said all the problems, but it is also very clear, on the positive side, that well-designed safe homes with access to facilities provide part of the foundation for successful and prosperous lives. Prosperity and the ambition for sustainable growth go hand in hand with healthy, safe environments. Existing guidance and advice have not ensured the development of good housing and health-promoting neighbourhoods. There is no evidence that other non-mandatory guidance will help. That is, of course, why I am promoting these amendments.

Anyone who has played any role in government will know that, when setting out these sorts of regulations or guidance to authorities, some of them follow it very well and some do not. If this is all to be contained in what is in essence guidance, as the Minister has already mentioned, how will the Government deal with the people who do not follow the guidance in place? I entirely recognise that we need more homes, and I would also have referred to the 159,000 children that the Minister referred to as living in temporary accommodation at the moment, which is an appalling situation.

Amendment 123 says that any national or local plan or strategy for development must be designed to improve the physical, mental and social health and well-being of people. This reunites planning and health— the two were once inseparable in government and policy—and it takes account of the vital role that planning has in improving health and well-being.

Amendment 185SF, according to the Member’s explanatory statement,

“is based on Clause 43 of the Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill which places a duty on strategic authorities on health promotion and health inequalities. It uses the same language but replaces strategic authorities with local planning authorities. The effect of this amendment is to place a duty on planning authorities to promote health improvement and health inequalities”.

The obvious question—and I am particularly interested in the answer—is: if it is appropriate for the top-tier authority to have regard to that, why is it not for the planning authority? Is the higher-level authority simply irrelevant, and are the words in the other Bill just words without any follow-through into planning itself?

My Amendments 189, 191 and 193 place similar duties on development corporations. They already have, in this Bill, duties on sustainable development and climate change and, I would add, the positive promotion of the physical, mental and social health of the residents in their areas by ensuring the creation of healthy homes and neighbourhoods. These three elements —sustainable development, climate change and health improvement—fit very naturally together, as earlier debates today have shown, and actions to address one tend to reinforce the others.

My final two amendments, which are very familiar, are about healthy homes and neighbourhoods. Amendment 226 places a duty on the Secretary of State to promote a comprehensive regulatory framework for planning and the built environment designed to secure the health and well-being of the people in England and healthy homes and neighbourhoods. Amendment 351 provides a schedule describing that. This means dealing with all the health issues that I mentioned earlier on this group of amendments.

The current arrangements have not worked, and if not this regulatory framework—which I am not wedded to the detail of—what are the Government going to put in place? If the Government have the ambition to create decent homes and developments, which I think they do, they need some levers in place. It is as simple as that. I beg to move.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to three amendments in my name, but first I thank the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, for his generous comments with regard to the amendments that I tabled. I completely echo what he said in reverse: I am fully supportive of what he has just put before the Committee.

During the last sitting of the Committee, I spoke to a series of amendments on the importance of physical activity and well-being in the context of planning law, and I now rise to speak to Amendments 138A, 185SC and 185SD. In so doing I thank ukactive, a not-for-profit profit organisation that represents and supports the UK’s physical activity sector. I thank it for its consistent high-quality work on the subject in the interests of its members and the wider world of sport, recreation and physical activity, for which it is widely renowned.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord and am happy to reflect on any issues raised in Committee. If he wants further discussions on it, I am happy to have those.

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, this has been another good, if lengthy, debate, which I thought mixed very well the principles and the practical. A lot of very practical points came up, such as those about the financial impact of activity from the noble Baroness, Lady Grey- Thompson, and the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan; the very practical proposals from my noble friend Lord Carlile about the design principles; and some very important points from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, about the links between health and planning and whether those are actually brought together, anatomising the various ways in which it does not look as if they are.

I have listened very carefully to the Minister, and I will look at what she has to say about how the proposals that I and others have been putting forward cut across what is already happening in the various proposals from the Government. If I may, when I have done that, I might wish to come back to talk to her before Report to discuss those particular issues.

I shall resist the temptation to ask one last question. With all that panoply of action that the Government are taking, what happens if the result we all want is not delivered? How do we secure the actual delivery? But I am not going to ask that question at this point, and I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 123 withdrawn.