Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Howard of Rising Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 4th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, we have degrouped the Clause 51 stand part notice to facilitate an urgent debate on issues that have come to a head over the Summer Recess—namely, local community engagement on asylum hotels and media briefings from the Government in respect of environmental regulations. As such, I will not elaborate much further on Clause 51, given that most of the relevant issues have been debated on a previous group.

I begin by addressing the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising on bat protections. Without pre-empting his argument, I believe his amendment was born out of the report in the Times on 17 August 2025 that the Chancellor is considering reforms to change the rules on nature protections in respect of bats and newts. My noble friend will surely set out the case for his amendment, but this Bill is an opportunity to deliver the reforms we need to unlock housing. If the Government hope to deliver 1.5 million homes in this Parliament, as they have promised, they cannot afford to wait for a second planning Bill for these reforms.

I now turn to the issue of asylum hotels and to Amendments 135HZB to 135HZD, 360A and 360B in my name. At their core, these amendments are about fairness, accountability and democratic consent. They seek to give local communities and planning authorities the voice and the agency they currently lack. Too often, decisions to convert hotels into asylum accommodation have been imposed on towns and cities without consultation, leaving residents feeling powerless and ignored. We saw this most recently in Epping, where anger spilled on to the streets only after the decision had already been taken.

The principle is simple. Changing the use of a hotel or an HMO, a house in multiple occupation, to accommodate asylum seekers should be recognised as a material change of use under planning law. That would mean that planning permission is required, just as it would be for a significant change of use or major building works. This change matters for two reasons. First, it would ensure that local people are consulted through the normal planning process before hotels or shared housing are converted for this purpose. Communities deserve a say in decisions that affect their neighbourhoods. Secondly, it would resolve the current legal uncertainty highlighted by the Bell Hotel case, where the courts have been asked to consider whether an injunction should apply. The Court of Appeal ruling on the Bell Hotel was not a decision on whether planning permission was required. Rather, it was a decision on the merits of an interim injunction, which is a particular type of urgent planning enforcement.

Case law and planning decisions on both sides have accepted that individual hotels did or did not require planning permission when they changed into asylum hostels. In the absence of any MHCLG planning policy, the practical result is uncertainty for councils, uncertainty for residents and uncertainty for local businesses. It would be far better if there were a clear set of rules, with individual councils determining planning applications on their merits with due process, rather than councils and courts retrospectively enforcing vague laws.

Above all, these amendments are about trust—trust between government and local communities, trust that local voices will not be bypassed and trust that decisions with such profound social consequences will be taken openly and not forced on people with no notice and no consultation. I hope that noble Lords on the Benches opposite agree.

The choice before us could not be clearer: either we stand with local communities that want a fair and reasonable voice on how and where asylum accommodation is provided, or we allow the current system of central diktat and imposed asylum hotels to continue. These amendments are targeted, proportionate and urgently needed. They offer a sensible way forward that balances compassion with consent and national responsibility with local accountability. The country is watching us. I hope that the Minister takes these amendments forward and that the Government reconsider their position of placing the rights of illegal immigrants above the rights of our local people. I therefore commend them to the Committee.

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 346DB in my name is a probing amendment to debate what can be done to get rid of the absurd rules relating to bats—I am resisting calling them “batty”. The legislation is complex, but that does not alter the need for something to be done to get rid of the present insanity.

There are no bats in the United Kingdom of the type that is threatened with extinction, so there is no harm or danger to them; you cannot damage something that does not exist. There are some types that are close to being endangered, but there are abundant quantities of these types in other countries throughout the world. If the existing legislation were got rid of, there would be no danger to the world’s bat population. In short, legislation to preserve bats is unnecessary.

I will give two examples of the absurdities caused by the present legislation. Your Lordships will have read of the first, which my noble friend Lord Fuller referred to—the £100 million bat tunnel built during the construction of HS2. At a time of appalling government finances, it is scarcely credible to spend £100 million in this way.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend realise that we could have had 10 front doors for that price?

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

I am very grateful for the intervention. It makes the world of Alice in Wonderland look normal and sensible, and that also applies to the front door.

My second example is on a smaller scale. With the support and blessing of English Heritage, I recently purchased and pulled down a particularly ugly and inappropriate 1960s chalet-style house adjacent to Castle Rising Castle, which is a listed monument, in order to replace the horror with cottages built in the traditional local stone. This was a project for the greater good that, fingers crossed, might have just broken even. That was before the bat people got involved.

An inspection took place to check whether there was any trace of bats in the house. There was no evidence of bats, but that was not good enough for the bat people. I was made to take off the roof, tile by tile, so that a bat person could inspect each tile as it was taken off. This was despite the inspection having shown there was no trace of bats. To get to the roof in safety, the building had to be scaffolded, an absurdity for something about to be pulled down. It then took six men four weeks to remove each tile and show it to the bat person before the tile could be thrown away. Using machinery already on site would have taken one man half a day. I ask your Lordships: what sanity can there be in carrying on in this manner?

I have not even started on what the archaeologist wanted. I was made to dig down three metres, a metre below the two-metre foundations that were planned. At all stages, this had to be inspected by an archaeologist, with men and machinery having to wait for the archaeologist to find time. Your Lordships can guess what that cost.

As a country, we have managed to get to a situation where the greater good is being destroyed by the antics of minority interests, which can look at things only from their own—in many cases laudable, maybe, but very narrow—perspectives. How can any Government expect houses to be built with the enormous difficulties that builders have to contend with? I have mentioned only two. Let us start on the road to sanity by repealing all legislation relating to the preservation of the bat population. They will not disappear; they will still be around centuries after the legislation has been repealed.

[Lord Banner (Con)]

My Lords, I offer some views on the legal effects that Amendments 135HZB and 135HZC, on asylum hotels and asylum HMOs, would achieve, in particular to develop the point made by my noble friend Lady Scott on the current legal uncertainty relating to those kinds of accommodation. Broadly speaking, under the planning Acts, planning permission is required for development. Development is defined in Section 55(1) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 as including

“the making of any material change in the use of”

the land or building in question.

As my noble friend Lady Scott has outlined, the current case law in relation to this kind of accommodation is that whether the change of use of a hotel to accommodation for asylum seekers is a material change of use is a matter of fact and degree in the particular circumstances of each case. There is no hard and fast rule. That, in turn, breaks down to two questions. Has there been a change of use, from hotel to what normally is sought to be characterised as a hostel for asylum seekers? If there has, is that use material in planning terms, having regard to the particular circumstances and effects?

The difficulty with that situation is that, as my noble friend said, it generates considerable uncertainty for all stakeholders. It creates uncertainty for the commercial party behind the hotel. Is the investment that they intend to make—in converting the hotel and making it fit for this kind of accommodation—at risk without obtaining planning permission or a certificate of lawfulness guaranteeing that permission is not needed? There is uncertainty for the local planning authority. Does it enforce, with the potential risk of enormous costs—potentially millions of pounds in a particular case—not necessarily knowing what the outcome of that would be? If it does not, has it turned a blind eye to something which is illegal? There are really difficult issues there. It is quite hard to advise local authorities in those situations which side of the line they are on, because it is so evaluative and fact sensitive.

There is obviously uncertainty for the public in question about what is going on in their area. There is, dare I say, quite possibly also uncertainty for the Home Office in understanding the planning status of asylum accommodation within this country. These amendments would provide clarity by drawing a clear line in the sand that this kind of accommodation requires planning permission, with the local consultation that goes with, so that everybody knows where they stand, thereby eliminating the current ambiguity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, if I may return briefly to the main subject of bats, I do not at all agree with my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising that bats are unimportant. They are absolutely part of nature. Nature in this country is hugely depleted and we need a lot more bats, but the lesson I draw from his story is that for all his huge expenditure, no bats benefited whatever. Nothing that he was made to do benefited bats in any way whatever. It is an entirely wrong-headed way of going about things. What we want is a lot more bats. If we had made my noble friend pay a few thousand pounds to make spaces for bats elsewhere in his estate, I am sure he would have done so with pleasure.

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

There is no need. The castle provides a home to endless bats.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

I think the Government recognise this both in the later parts of this Bill and indeed in what they have done with offshore wind. They recognise that offshore wind will kill a number of sea-birds and that compensation must be made for that.

What we need in this country is a lot more nature. That will take a good chunk of money. It is ridiculous to have a system that just spaffs that money away. We ought to be taking the opportunity of bats, which are pretty mobile creatures. In nature, bats live in cracks in trees. Trees fall down all the time and the bats just move home. We are worrying about bats in a completely ridiculous way. We are wasting huge sums of money and we must stop.