Permitted Development Rights (Extension) Bill [HL]

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Friday 7th February 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lucas]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are bringing forward some excellent proposals to get us more housing, which we really need. I am in favour of a focus on new estates, new towns and building out near railway stations, and I very much hope that we will see those ambitions realised soon. However, today I will focus on the promotion of gentle density, connectivity and community within existing towns as a way of contributing to dealing with the housing shortage.

A good deal of housing in existing settlements is low density and in developments that were put together in the belief that everyone would go everywhere by car, because the car was the future. There is a lot to gain in our current world from allowing such settlements to become denser.

Shops, schools, doctor’s surgeries, pubs and community centres all require a minimum number of users to flourish. If those users are within a small enough range, those facilities can be accessed on foot or by public transport. If they are more spread out, you get a community which is entirely dependent on the car, which is quite isolating: you go from one place to another without interacting in between; it is not a great builder of communities. Also, if we are densifying a town, we are generally talking about employing small builders who get cut out of the bigger developments by the well-organised big housebuilders. However, if you are working within a town in complicated little ways, that space is ideally suited to helping our smaller building firms flourish.

It is natural for people living in a house to want to enlarge it. People want to stay in an area for the jobs, schools, family and community to which they are connected. They could move, but then they would have stamp duty and moving costs—always things to want to avoid—and, anyway, there may not be a house available to which they would like to move. Extending is good for us all, because if we all extend our houses, we will need to build fewer houses. Adding a bedroom so an adult child can stay at home rather than sharing a two-bedroom flat, reduces the need for new housing by half a house. Extending can also help young people to get on the housing ladder, because they can live at home for longer and save for a deposit. That is especially important in London and the south-east, but increasingly important everywhere. If people can afford to make their house larger and would find that a desirable thing to do, why would we prefer them to go on an expensive, long-haul holiday abroad, rather than employing people here and creating an asset for themselves and for the nation as a whole?

How do we do this? This Bill takes a shy at that. Given that we are expecting a government planning Bill, I will not try to focus on perfection or on improving what is already in my Bill. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has raised some very cogent objections to it, but since I shall not push to take my Bill any further, I hope rather that these points will help inform the Government’s own deliberations as to what to put in their Bill.

The Bill seeks to make best and optimal use of land, and to minimise the circumstances in which a capricious or arbitrary refusal of densification can be made. It builds on existing planning arrangements, expanding the presumption in favour. However, it intends to have safeguards to prevent the destruction of the street scene where there are design codes or where change would create visual disharmony; to avoid overdevelopment; and to respect conservation imperatives. There will be rules to be obeyed under this Bill, but not rules that are silly or hard to comply with; I want to see us build quality and beauty, but to get on and build.

The Bill allows for the preservation of private rights, but also provides help in navigating them. If we are to rely on people doing more of their own development, we must help them navigate this tortuous area of competing private rights and property, and it would be an easy thing for a well set-up planning authority to be helpful with.

I have also suggested that we should put our foot forward more in building in flood zones. A lot of our existing communities are flood liable, but if we are to allow people to expand their houses, we can reasonably say that they must make them flood-proof, so that we get some of our flood prevention done as a result of allowing people to extend.

Beyond that, I would like to see it made much easier for people to make use of roof spaces; to have full-height extensions to the side and rear to make a house larger; to be able to put a single-storey extension in the garden; to put extra floors on bungalows; and, within the centres of towns, to go up to four storeys without question.

Good communities on the continent, in places such as Holland and Belgium, are dense, but it is a very comfortable, community-orientated, good-to-live-in density. That is where I would like to see us being allowed to head. In addition, I propose that we should make it easier for householders to make their own contributions towards net zero. It should be easier to put in heat pumps and solar heating or electricity. We know that we want to do it. It is an efficient process when it is done at the individual house level, because you connect the source of power and its user intimately, without needing a lot of infrastructure beyond that.

This is not an easy area to get right. There are many contending issues. I very much look forward to the Government’s planning Bill and hope that they will prove more adventurous and better at drafting than I have been. I hope to see a system that will give real impetus to the process of densification. I would like to see planning authorities with clarity of rules, speed of action and maybe some cumulative economic test. Yes, there are lots of conditions that planning authorities may impose but if, together, their costs make a change uneconomic, it has gone too far. The planning authority must choose what it wants to add as a requirement. It cannot just go overboard and throw everything in. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to all who have spoken, in particular my noble friend Lady Coffey. It is nice to have some support from somewhere other than the Front Benches. She raised some important matters around what kind of flooding we have to deal with, adaptation for disability and, indeed, the importance of small reservoirs. Letting people do individual things, to make individual benefits to contribute to the whole, is really the substance of this Bill.

Let us not have to do everything in big lumps. Let us solve the problem by everyone doing their bit. Allowing more people to do their bit is the burden of what I have put forward in this Bill. I accept the criticism from the Government that it would be better done through secondary legislation and through being consulted on. I very much hope that this is a direction that the Government will feel inclined to take in due course, and I very much look forward to the Government’s Bills when they come through.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

House adjourned at 1.53 pm.