Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 25th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests in the register—in particular, that I am a farmer and landowner in Cumbria, president of Historic Buildings and Places, and until last autumn was for six years chairman of the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership. I have also been involved in rural, environmental and heritage organisations and matters for much of my life.

Forty years ago, to my own surprise—both then and in retrospect now—I chaired the Lake District planning board’s development control committee. At that time, I began to wonder whether local authority membership of itself was the right basis for the quasi-judicial function of determining planning applications, and I came to the conclusion that boards analogous to JPs might be better; hence, I welcome the idea of mandatory education for planning committees. Of course, local knowledge and views matter, but they are not the only consideration in determining applications, and planning officers on their own in the real world cannot always deflect the tsunami of local populism that sometimes accompanies controversial applications.

Part of the point of the planning system is to get it right without resorting to appeals. That is somewhat analogous to the belief that I have that perhaps the most important thing that I learned from reading for the Bar was to avoid litigation if you possibly can. Given the overriding requirements behind the Bill and the points made in this debate, there is a very good case for accountable development corporations and special regimes for national infrastructure. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has said, the devil lies in the detail, and they must be transparent and accountable. In such cases, deliberations on all planning matters must be taken into account. Listed buildings remain listed, even if specific listed building consents may not be required. Changing the planning process should not affect the planning and evidential significance of heritage, nature or environmental considerations. Those matters are, in their own way, very important to our national economy and the character of the country in which we live, and are at the heart of contemporary ideas about “Place” and its generally recognised importance to the wider economy.

It is important that land use policy and its implementation is not hijacked by the public sector to promote its aspirations at the expense of the small man and local concerns and other considerations not directly measurable in economic terms. There is a temptation, which sometimes cannot be resisted, for the public sector to see the process of authorisation as a kind of bulldozer to get its own way and take forward its own agenda. I am sure that we can all think of instances where that may be happening.

While charging for planning applications may seem a bit out of kilter, in that the basis of land law and the planning system is the presumption that one can do what one wants with one’s own land, unless there is a good reason not to, which is defined inter alia by planning policies, in reality this purist approach hardly seems realistic in the world in which we live. But these charges should not be greater pro rata if the authority concerned is ineffective. Indeed, I had wondered whether perhaps, if you won a planning appeal, you should get the money back.

We have heard this evening very considerable scepticism expressed about the mechanisms of Part 3 of the Bill. I simply say that I echo them. Speaking from the perspective of a Cumbria farmer and landowner, I can say that the current arrangements are all over the place. As someone wanting to take forward these things, it is simply impossible to know what on earth you have to do. The parallel public and private regimes taken as a whole make no real sense, and much of the money talked about in this context does not seem to exist. Unless matters are sharpened up, much of this will be shown to be whatever is the proper collective word for paper tigers.

Planning is crucial. We need it in this country, because it is a form of estate management for the nation as a whole, based on the country’s disparate needs being balanced out between them. In that way, you avoid physical anarchy. Like all estate management, its implementation on the ground depends on money, which is why the implementation of much of what we are talking about this evening depends more or less entirely on the Government’s economic policy.

Clearly, the country is in a mess; if good policies prevail, that will be for the good, but the impact of some current policies will, I believe, inhibit growth, and they will have a damaging impact on what we are discussing. The state of the economy is crucial. How planning policies work out depends on landowners, developers and those running and carrying out the planning function working together. Levelling up was a response to a failure in this regard, in the north of England. There is still much more to be done. I say, “Good luck to them”, but I sense that they may need it.