Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd May 2023 Lords Chamber

The legislative framework has to give nature some teeth or we will continue to see more declines of our species, habitats and communities across the English landscape. If we are serious about meeting targets such as 30 by 30, it is critical that we move and act quickly now. Therefore, I see both these amendments as really important, because they start to raise the profile of our green belt beyond just being a legislative or planning requirement that was set up many years ago to something that properly recognises what we have in our green belt and why we need to conserve it.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, forgive me: I do not have an amendment in this group and I do not want to delay the point when we arrive at my further amendments, but I want to say something about green-belt policy. I am glad to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, because I come from outside Cambridge and she lived in Cambridge, at one time, and now lives now in Oxford, if I am correct. Looking at the green belt by reference to Oxford and Cambridge is an interesting way to approach these things, and I want to do it by reference to the Cambridge green belt in particular.

After the noble Baroness left Cambridge, we lived with precisely the consequences that she described. For 25 years, until about 2000-01, all the development that was required for Cambridge was happening in villages outside Cambridge and generally beyond the green belt. There are many people who will say that it is all very well to talk about reviewing the green belt, looking at green-belt land and whether it should be in or out the green belt, but they are not politicians and they do not have to live with the consequences of reviewing the green belt. Well, I was a politician when we agreed to review the green belt in the run-up to the strategic plan review in 2006, if I remember correctly. Not only did we review the green belt and sustain that through an examination in public, but we successfully reshaped the green belt around Cambridge such that, in the years since, a much larger proportion of the development that is required for Cambridge has happened in the green belt. Some of it has actually delivered access to the countryside that was never available before.

That firmly focused our minds on the purposes of the green belt. For example, we retained green corridors running into Cambridge. Those familiar with Cambridge will realise that, if they come into the centre through Trumpington, they will continue to see countryside reaching right to the centre of Cambridge itself. That was not lost. However, the review acknowledged the requirement for the release of land not primarily for residential purposes but for the purpose of building the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. If we had not reviewed the green belt, the biomedical campus south of Cambridge, around Addenbrooke’s Hospital and what is now Royal Papworth Hospital, and their related research institutes, would not have been able to be built. That would have been an immense loss to the UK economy and life sciences sector.

The point I am making is that understanding when to retain the boundaries of the green belt, when to review them and under what circumstances that review should conclude that the boundaries should be changed is a vital part of planning policy. We should not leave it out. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, and other noble Lords remember from other debates that I am firmly of the opinion that this legislation should be used to give a stronger statutory basis to the environmental purposes of planning, including—one of my earlier amendments did this—in respect to nature recovery and biodiversity gain.

However, I should say to the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, that I think it is inappropriate to extend green-belt purposes to the features that she has in Amendment 295, because that would create a different statutory basis for planning policy on green-belt land, as opposed to greenfield or any other available land for development. It would entrench the idea that there is something different about green-belt land from other land.

Of course it is permanent, but I remember back in the early 2000s when I asked what permanent meant in relation to the green belt. The answer, I was told, was 25 years. If it is permanent now, we are talking about land that should stay in the green belt until 2050, more or less. That is when we are supposed to achieve net zero—in fact, before then, as our Green colleagues regularly tell us and would tell us now if they were with us. We have to think about the consequences we expect for our land use strategies if we are to achieve net zero between now and 2050.

For example, I have mentioned Cambridge City Council’s environmental assessment before it commenced the review of its local plan. It showed that it requires a significant increase in the density of development in urban areas and development to be focused on public transport corridors. Let us look at where the public transport corridors are, for example around London. I come from Essex: if you go out into the countryside on the Central line, you go through the green belt, but you do so on a public transport corridor on which there is effectively no development. We have to look very carefully and ask whether that is sustainable. The principle of sustainable development is at the heart of planning, and the boundaries of the green belt should be subject to the principle of sustainable development and assessed against the purposes set out in the National Planning Policy Framework.

As I mention the NPPF for the 98th time in these debates, it would be jolly helpful for the Government to tell us what precisely they plan to say in the NPPF and in the national development management policies in future. I come back to chapter 13 of the draft NPPF, which has two parts to it: one is effectively about setting policy for the green belt, which is about setting its boundaries, and the second is about the policies that should apply to the determination of an application for development within the green belt. The latter should be a national development management policy and the former should not: it should continue to be part of what is effectively the overall guidance from the Secretary of State for plan making. My noble friend sent me a letter following a previous debate but did not clarify precisely that division. I think we need to know, as a very clear example of what is or is not an NDMP. It is an important basis for our future debates on Report.

I am sorry that Ministers thought it appropriate to propose a change to the NPPF to include the sentence:

“Green Belt boundaries are not required to be reviewed and altered if this would be the only means of meeting the objectively assessed need for housing over the plan period”.


I do not know why they have inserted it and I do not see the benefit of it. In those local authorities that consist very largely of green belt—and there are some—it will effectively remove from them the obligation to play their part at all in the provision of housing to meet assessed need. I suspect that the same will be true of the requirements for employment and commercial-related development. As I see it, this has no place. Sustainable development should be the principle, and this sentence effectively absolves those local planning authorities of the responsibility to pursue sustainable development in their areas. I hope that, even at this stage, when they look at the responses to the NPPF consultation, Ministers will recognise that this is inappropriate language to use in relation to green-belt boundary setting.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, this short debate has revealed that tension at the heart of planning policy and, indeed, political debate: what is the relative priority for environmental imperatives on the one hand and for housing on the other? What the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, described as covering land with concrete is, for some people, providing families with decent homes. That is the balance we have to make.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young, opened this debate by asking what the green belt is for. Her amendment outlines nine criteria and purposes for the green belt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, came up with some more criteria. I turn that question the other way around: if a piece of land meets none of the nine criteria in the amendment or those mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, but happens to be designated as green belt, should it remain designated? I am all in favour of expanding the green belt if it meets these criteria and others, but there are bits of the green belt that fulfil none of them.

My noble friend Lord Lansley referred to the document put out on 22 December on reforms to national planning policy. One of the questions was:

“Do you agree that national policy should make clear that Green Belt does not need to be reviewed or altered when making plans?”.


The answer is that I do not agree. As my noble friend said, that gives a let-out, but it also prevents the optimum use of land that is needed for housing.

I hope that, if we do come up with positive policies and descriptions of the objectives to be fulfilled by the green belt, we will look very critically at bits of the green belt that do not meet those criteria. There have been award-winning housing schemes built on what were green belts. We may need more of them if we are to hit our target of 300,000 homes a year. Along with my noble friend Lord Lansley, I think that there are other considerations to take into account when striking the appropriate balance between the environment on one hand and the need for decent homes on the other.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I am happy to support the amendments that have just been moved.

I remind the Committee that in earlier debates we spent quite a lot of time on the importance of creating an environment that is clean and healthy for people to live in—the noble Lord, Lord Best, in particular encouraged us to do that—while earlier today we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, about the vital need to protect woodland and biodiversity more widely. The Minister responded that none of this required her amendments because, he pointed out, the planning system was there and the planners could be “proactive” in using tree preservation orders and measures regarding biodiversity powers.

That is all well and good, but with one problem: the vast majority of councils responsible for taking these proactive measures are short of planners. There is a huge shortage. Where we have an amendment that relies on there being sufficient skills, resources and capabilities to deliver all these things, we already know from the research that has been done that there is a significant shortage. Noble Lords do not have to listen to me to know that; the chief planner in the Minister’s own department has said categorically that there are not enough planners in local government in England. Joanna Averley went on to say, at the end of last year, that the department did not have the funds to provide resources for there to be more planners. My question for the Minister is: what is going to be done to increase the number of planners to carry out all the work that he keeps referring to and which will come about as a result of the Bill before us?

I want to place on record a huge tribute to the RTPI for the work it is doing to try to improve skills. It has its degree-level apprenticeship scheme, as I am sure the Minister is aware, and a number of other measures, but we are in a situation where it is now said that planners are like gold dust.

The situation is compounded by a further problem. Another amendment talks about what the role of chief planning officers should be. Again, that would be well and good if there were any chief planning officers to have a role. The truth is that we now have a situation where one-quarter of councils in England do not have a head of planning reporting directly to a chief executive. There is a real shortage, which has the knock-on implication that there tends not to be a career structure to encourage people to enter at the bottom end. The shortage of planners is exacerbated by the shortage of chief planning officers.

I want to use this amendment as an opportunity gently to ask the Minister what the Government’s plans are to resolve the resource shortage, which we do not need a review of because we already know it is there. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, at this late hour I do not want to speak at any great length. I declare an interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. In that context, we are acutely aware of the shortage of planners in local authority planning departments, despite the efforts made, not least by Cambridge City Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council in bringing together their two planning services to try to ensure efficiency in both planning and the use of resources.

There is a shortage, so we looked at working with the RTPI’s young planners group and with Anglia Ruskin University, so that some of those degree apprenticeship placements would be in Cambridge, in addition to those in Chelmsford. That might bring more of those young planners into the Cambridge area, where we hope they will stay, working in businesses and local authorities locally.

One thing we have looked at, which is possible but not easy to do, is the development community entering into, effectively, area-wide planning performance agreements with a local planning authority. Such planning performance agreements are entered into generally in relation to individual developments and can be the subject of additional charges for things such as pre-application advice. Of course, that is purely on a cost-recovery basis. Once you begin to attribute charging and costs to individual developments, even though from the planning authority’s point of view it does not influence the outcome of any of the decision-making, there is a risk that that is what people perceive to be the case.

To try to avoid the risk of any attribution of resources to results in terms of the integrity and transparency of the planning decision-making, we and the development community want to look at the ability to assist in resourcing planning for major developments in the area, and to do so in a way independent of the individual applications and the individual developer. I hope that, when Ministers think about how we might increase resources, they will recognise this as one possible arrangement.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as London’s Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience and chair of the London Resilience Forum. I just want to say, briefly, that I completely agree with my noble friend Lord Kennedy, particularly on Amendment 504E. I got quite excited when he showed it to me. If an amendment can be described as exciting, this one would match that criterion.

An office for risk and resilience would provide a focus and play an invaluable part in ensuring that this country is better prepared to deal with the many risks we face, not least in relation to climate change. If we need to do anything through this legislation, it is to ensure that the buildings and infrastructure being built now are still fit for purpose in a decade, two decades or 50 years’ time. At the moment, we cannot guarantee that this is the case. We should note that resilience is particularly relevant to the concept of levelling up, as inevitably those individuals or institutions with better resources are inherently more resilient. I urge the Minister and the Government to consider this amendment seriously.