Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 4th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 99AA in my name is the first of a number of amendments we will be considering over the coming weeks on the importance of sport and recreational provision being an essential priority for planning policy in this country. At a time when playing fields are under threat, swimming pools are being closed and obesity is a growing reality among the population, especially young people, the need for a national plan for physical activity, recreation and well-being is vital if we are going to turn the tide and deliver a legacy for a country that rightly still celebrates the outstanding Olympic and Paralympic Games of London 2012. I declare an interest as a member of the Olympic committee which had oversight of the Games from 2005 until 2012, a board member of the London organising committee of the Games, and then chair of the British Olympic Association responsible for Team GB and the 29 gold medals that our Olympic athletes delivered.

Although we had a wonderful Olympic and Paralympic Games, which left a legacy of regenerating the East End of London well ahead of the projected schedule—in fact, 10 years earlier than would otherwise have been the case—we failed to deliver a lasting sports and physical activity legacy for our country. Today, this amendment provides the opportunity for the Government to deliver that long-overdue legacy and demonstrate to the country a true commitment to sport and recreation.

The reason is unequivocally clear. The planning system provides the building blocks for the provision of open spaces, play areas, sport and recreational facilities and the well-being of the nation. As with the East End of London in the run-up to London 2012, every single facility under the leadership of Sir John Armitt, the inspirational leader of the Olympic Delivery Authority, was built with legacy use for the community in mind. Nothing failed to be considered in that context.

I want to take that experience of the Olympic Games in London nationwide. That is why my amendment would place in law a requirement that:

“Training for all members of local planning authorities must include an emphasis on healthy placemaking, which includes planning adequate provision of sport and physical activity spaces and facilities to meet communities’ needs”.


It is for not just some members of planning authorities but all.

In the planning for London 2012, we learned a great deal from Australia and the success of the superb Sydney Olympic Games in 2000. Today, seven years in advance of the Games, the Minister from Queensland responsible for the Games in Brisbane is here to listen to and learn from our debate in person. He is the hard-working Deputy Premier, Minister for State Development, Infrastructure and Planning and Minister for Industrial Relations in the Government of Queensland, Jarrod Bleijie. He is an outstanding politician, responsible for the delivery of his vision of a lasting legacy for the 2032 Games in Brisbane—for the people of Queensland, well beyond the closing ceremony. We wish him well. I briefly place on record that the relationship between Britain and Australia in sport is defined by a deep and historically significant, though always contentious, rivalry, which is second to none. Yet, although that rivalry is often intense, it also involves a strong sense of mutual respect and a shared sporting heritage that continues to evolve.

So, to reflect that close relationship, what can the Government do today? They can accept this amendment. Why? Because, as the Schools’ Enterprise Association stated, 500 swimming pools have been lost since 2010, totalling a massive 34,859 square metres of water space lost to the public. Of all the pools lost in that time, almost half—42%—have been lost since 2020, and this continued into the last year. With increasing financial pressures, ageing facilities and rising operational costs, many more pools and leisure centres are at risk of closure. Of the 10 local authorities that have seen the biggest decline in pool space, 70% have higher-than-average indices of multiple deprivation, risking exacerbating already-stark health inequalities.

By the end of Committee on this and the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, I aim, with my colleagues from across the Committee, to set out the building blocks for a national recovery plan for physical activity. This amendment, and others that ukactive and colleagues across the political divide, both in the House and in this Committee, are promoting, necessitate the integration of sport and physical activity facilities into planning law. We want to ensure that this is given weighting in priority that is equal to other facilities and services. It is essential that sport and physical activity are understood as the bedrock of health and well-being within a community and that there is adequate provision of facilities on this basis.

By accepting this amendment, the Government would take a small but necessary step to meet residents’ needs and provide the necessary training for all members of local planning authorities to understand the importance of adequate provision of sport and physical activity spaces and facilities to meet community needs and the health and well-being of the nation.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, it is a delight to follow the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, on his amendment. I entirely agree with everything he says. Not that long ago, a lido not far from where my daughter lives in east London was ripped down and turned into, of all things, a car park, which seems an ultimately depressing sanction on today. I can tell him right now that, if he chooses to divide the House on that subject in the future, I will walk behind him through the Lobby. I thank him.

On my Amendments 100, 101 and 102, I am very grateful to be supported by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, on all three and by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, on Amendment 100. They are in addition to Clause 50, and they are about training to do with climate change, biodiversity and ecological surveying. This does not just hold up planning distinctions—it is a question not just of newts, bats and different kinds of badgers but of people not knowing what they are talking about. Therefore, a lot of decisions are not only delayed but end up going to appeal.

My Amendment 100 would mean that the training would be mandatory in the overall planning that is to be provided in general under Clause 50. Amendment 102 provides that the training must be provided not only to elected members of the planning committees but also to local authority planning officers responsible for making any planning decisions. Amendment 101 includes the highways, with the list of authorities to which the training provisions apply. That is obviously crucial and often gets left out, because roads, after all, cut through animal corridors, divide woods, divide fields and separate areas where nature is trying to talk to itself and be together.

These skills and resourcing gaps with planning authorities have been identified very generally across the board as a key blocker. Indeed, the Government’s own impact assessment for the Bill states:

“There is very limited data on how environmental obligations affect development”,


yet there is clear and mounting evidence, including from the OEP, that ecological capacity and skills within the planning system is a key reason for the environmental assessment not functioning effectively.

The OEP goes on to say that

“without Government commitment to providing those public bodies responsible for assessments with the skills”

and

“expertise … needed … now or in future”,

they

“will not deliver as they should to support positive environmental outcomes”.

It advised that the Government should now develop a strategy for this resourcing and for securing the expertise by the public bodies.

A survey undertaken by the Association of Local Government Ecologists of its planning authorities found that only 53% of survey respondents said that their LPA has limited access to an ecologist for planning work, and only 5% of respondents said that their system is adequate. Any noble Lord who was in the House on Monday listening to the Science Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Vallance of Balham, answer a question about AI and training would have found it interesting to hear him say that a report from MIT last week on the use of AI across companies

“noted that 95% of companies got very little benefit and 5% got massively disproportionate benefit”.—[Official Report, 1/9/25; col. 511.]

The reason was that they had been properly trained. Whether we are talking about training to build sports grounds or training to protect wildlife, the training is needed.

The excellent charity Plantlife has highlighted that these gaps are even more acute for, say, botany and mycology. Botany was once compulsory, I guess, when most of us took GCSE biology. I certainly did it, and I did at A-level too. Research shows, however, that it is now practically non-existent. That is why, again, it is crucial that the amendment includes botanical and mycological survey.

Much has been made here of the cost. The noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, mentioned this as well, but I always feel that I am trying to plead amendments that put more and more emphasis on local authorities doing more and more. I expect that many Members remember the extraordinary Dasgupta report that came out from the Treasury under the Tory Government and looked at the costs of nature. I had the privilege of spending much of last night interviewing Professor Dasgupta. We were talking about many specific things, one of which was that the real way to rebuild our shattered biodiversity and our ecological strength is, generally, through a community, but there is a very strong financial aspect here. Our GDP, at the moment, is an incentive to depreciate all natural assets. The system for measuring the state of public finances discourages all investment in maintaining the UK’s stock of natural capital. Shockingly, the Bank of England mandates do not recognise that value.

It would make a lot of sense for the Government to revisit some of these local-looking economics and say, “Yes, we can afford to train people properly; in fact, we can’t afford not to train them properly”. Well-trained councillors and well-trained planning leaders will also add to people’s enjoyment and, as with building sports facilities, the joy they take in nature, being out in the countryside and thinking it is something in which they have a vested interest to protect. Unless we all start doing that, we will all be poorer, regardless of what we do.