Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Shipley Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 25th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I remind the House that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I understand the ambition of the Bill to speed up infrastructure delivery. Planning frameworks are complex and can be slow. But I remind Ministers that when the Audit Commission existed, it audited planning performance, publicised poorly performing councils and required improvements from them. I accept the need to enforce shorter timescales on decision-making.

It is wrong to suggest that the planning system is responsible for not building enough homes. As we have heard, there are well over a million homes with planning permission that are not built and councils approve nine out of 10 planning applications for housing. It is not the planning system that causes low house completions but the lack of money—now partially addressed in the spending review, although not entirely—together with the lack of construction workers and materials, added to land banking by major builders that sit on planning permissions while land values rise.

The Government still want to build 1.5 million homes by 2029. That means they must build 374,000 a year from 2027. If that were to be done, at what quality might it be done? I ask that because the Bill could be the means of future-proofing our housing stock, given our ageing population and that we have more people who live with a disability. Many new homes lack quality, and some very poor housing is being produced through permitted development conversions where profits are the driving force. We need to build more healthy homes that last.

My noble friend Lord Russell and others have talked about Part 3. I agree with his conclusions, and I wish that Ministers would stop talking about this being about newts—not in this Chamber, but more generally. It is actually about 5,251 rare and protected habitats that must not lose their current legal safeguards.

Planning reform will help to deliver infrastructure, but many large infrastructure projects in this country have suffered from bad project management and huge cost overruns. It is not just about planning. The Bill includes several positive measures, such as making it easier for councils to purchase vacant land for housebuilding, localising planning fees, and increasing planning capacity. Those measures should be supported, but the national scheme of delegation will centralise decision-making when there is no evidence that decision-making will be improved. The democratic role of councillors in decision-making, which has been central to the English planning system, is at risk. Any reforms must safeguard local oversight and transparency, otherwise there is a risk that the public will not be supportive.

Planning reform will succeed only if there are qualified planning staff to do the work. To build capacity, the number of level 7 chartered town planner apprenticeships must be increased—this at a time when spending on planning has been reducing. According to the excellent brief from the Royal Town Planning Institute, we have a shortage of over 2,000 planners in local authorities and not enough chief planning officers, because that role has been downgraded over the years.

The real reason why planning has been in difficulty is that there have not been enough staff to do the work necessary, and too few chief planning officers with the necessary clout to drive progress and outcomes. Chief planning officers should be statutory, as I have said during the passage of previous planning Bills. The RTPI is right to urge the inclusion of a clause defining the purpose of planning, alongside an audit of the whole planning system and how it interlocks. Its proposed national spatial framework would be a positive improvement.

At this stage of our debate on the Bill, we have to put competency and accountability at the heart of decision-making, but Clause 51 gives too much power to Whitehall. If, under Clause 50, you train councillors to be better, why do you need to take the power away from them and give it to Whitehall? Whitehall does not need to be involved in the size of planning committees or the powers of officers and councillors. Finally, as the RTPI has said, planning is not a blocker; it is an under-resourced enabler, and this Bill could put that problem right.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 4th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 162 in my name is in this group and I am very grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Shipley, who have also put their names to it. I am glad that we have included it in this group and brought it forward, because it adds to the debate we had on the previous group—and this one—about how we arrive at a resourced and professionally effective overall planning function in local planning authorities. The last debate was principally about the resources that are available; this group and this debate tells us the importance of understanding the scope, complexity, breadth and degree of professional expertise that is required to deliver a successful planning function, and the planners themselves. The amendments that lead this group, on issues relating to health, the environment and so on, have amply demonstrated the degree of influence and importance that should be attached to the planning function in a local authority’s activity. I was delighted to hear what my noble friend Lord Moynihan had to say. I hope, when we reach Clause 52, he will note its value in showing that spatial development strategies should focus on health effects and inequalities. I hope that we can develop that important point.

Planners are often in this space already. Chapter 8 of the National Planning Policy Framework includes precisely the issues that relate to delivering on healthy and safe communities, including promoting healthy living. I am sometimes in awe of what is needed, as my noble friend Lord Fuller said, when putting together a local plan: the range and complexity of what needs to be included in it and the extent to which one has to anticipate the many issues that many communities will face in order to deliver it.

The new clause proposed in Amendment 162 says that local planning authorities should have a chief planner and, in doing so, they can—if they choose to do so—join together and appoint a chief planner for more than one authority. I say this advisedly, knowing that in my own area Cambridge City Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council jointly run a shared service, with the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning service at its head. The clause would allow for what is current best practice. It would also flexibly but necessarily require of local planning authorities that the person they appoint to be a chief planner must have the relevant expertise and experience to justify their doing so. I hope that we could say that was always the case; it is pretty nearly always the case, but it is necessary when giving them a power and requirement to do so that we should be clear that it should be exercised in this way.

Why do we need this? Many local authorities have a chief planner—but not all. I was very struck in the briefing that we received the Royal Town Planning Institute—and I am very grateful to it for inspiring this amendment—by how important this could be in terms of supporting the professionalism and development of the profession. We want more planners; I agree with the Minister about managing to maintain level 7 apprenticeships if we possibly can—these have been very important. We need more planners, and I welcome the Government’s financial support for additional planners. However, we need not only more planners but to make sure it is very respected profession.

What will bring people into planning as a profession is an understanding that there are professional leaders. I suppose my pitch for Amendment 162 is that not only should we be resourcing planning and increasing the number of planners but we should recognise that leadership matters in every walk of life, and that we should encourage local planning authorities to have chief planners who are themselves leaders of their profession. In future there will be fewer local planning authorities than there are now. I hope that through the chief planner role, we can encourage them to look to have that kind of professional leadership.

The example we might look to is the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government itself. My noble friend Lord Fuller talks about relevant planning functions and decisions made by Ministers; they are informed by professional expertise within the department. That is a profession led by the chief planner, who herself demonstrates the value of a chief planner role in relation to the planning functions of any organisation.

Interestingly, when the Government published their technical consultation on reform of planning committees—we will come on to more about that in the next group—they referred specifically to the question of a decision being made about the allocation of decisions to planning committees to tier A and tier B, and said that it should be done by the chief planner, together with the chair of the planning committee. That seems to me to be a present, important illustration of the independence of the professional expertise that should be brought to decision-making in local authorities.

If we are to rely on that, not least in relation to the national scheme of delegation, as a basis for making solid decisions about the allocation of decision-making, we absolutely need assurance that there will be a chief planner in each of these local planning authorities. I hope that when the Minister comes to respond to this debate, this might be one of the things that she has written against it not “resist” but “agree to consider”.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendment 162 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Lansley and Lord Best, as well as mine. As the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has rightly pointed out, this is an issue of professional leadership. It also underpins the delivery of the Government’s objectives with this Bill.

I add my support on the importance of comprehensive training for those involved in making decisions on planning matters. There are some very wise additional proposals in Amendments 99A to 102, and the case made by all those amendments is overwhelming. Someone in a local planning authority has to manage the training process, which has to be done at a senior level. That is one reason why I support the statutory requirement for local planning authorities to have a chief planner—but there are other compelling reasons, as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has identified.

Yesterday in Grand Committee, there was a statutory instrument to devolve housing and regeneration powers to Buckinghamshire, Surrey and Warwickshire councils. It was most welcome, it was approved, and it is a decision by the Government in their drive to devolve more decision-making to a local level, but it will succeed only if the capacity is there to deliver the desired outcomes. That capacity relates to the number of planning officers, their status and the training they have received. As we have heard, in recent years there have been rising levels of complaints about the planning system, its complexities and its delays. As we have heard also, one major cause is the lack of qualified planning staff and the downgrading of the status of planning, given the low number of chief planning officers reporting directly to the chief executive of a local authority.

We should recognise that Scotland has, for a year, had a requirement for statutory chief planning officers to be appointed by local authorities. I submit that we should do likewise if the planning system is to be speeded up in England and if the Government are to deliver their devolution agenda.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 162 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. It calls for every local authority to appoint a chief planner, and I thank the Royal Town Planning Institute for championing it. I must declare various interests as I have not already contributed in Committee: I am an honorary fellow of the RTPI and a vice-president of the Town and Country Planning Association and the Local Government Association.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 15th September 2025 Lords Chamber

In short, the amendment deals with the symptom—overlaps in jurisdiction—but not with the cause, which is the lack of a clear statutory framework for how development corporations fit into a devolved governance.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, having listened very carefully to the debate so far, I think the next best step would be to hear from the Minister, but I want to express some support for Amendment 362 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and Amendment 195A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott. I hope the Minister will provide clarity on those when she replies.

On 3 April, guidance was issued by the Government to clarify the legislation, scrutiny and governance of mayoral development corporations in combined authorities and combined county authorities. I am pleased that steps have been taken to incorporate the recommendations of the Tees Valley Review, published over 18 months ago, to clarify the regulations for the Tees Valley Combined Authority and the South Tees Development Corporation. It is important to ensure that there is absolute clarity about oversight, reserved matters, consent and stranded liabilities, and I welcome the Government’s firm intention to do so.

However, it has puzzled me that the words “risk” and “risk management” do not appear in the guidance published in April. There is also nothing about capacity building; that point was raised a moment ago by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott. It is very important that development corporations have the capacity to fulfil the expectations of the Government.

There is an issue, which we may come to in the next group of amendments, about where the development corporations will get their income from. I look forward to that discussion. I am concerned about how the mayoral development corporations will be structured to ensure that full risk analysis takes place on the decision-making for what will be major capital infrastructure investment. Overview and scrutiny are overview and scrutiny: scrutiny is scrutiny of a decision, and overview is overview of how decisions are being made. Risk and risk analysis come at the start of a decision to invest money, so this is not just about overview and scrutiny; it is about preventing risky investments.

When the Minister replies, will she explain who is going to pick up the bill if risk is not properly considered at the right point in the decision-making process? At the moment, I suspect that the bill will be carried by council tax payers in the area concerned and I would like that point to be clarified, because I do not think that a system based on the council tax payer being the body of last resort to make up a loss would be appropriate. I very much hope to hear the Minister’s views on those matters.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I will start with the notice from the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, opposing Clause 93 standing part. I welcome the opportunity to explain the intentions behind this clause. Clause 93 clarifies and extends areas for development and the remit of development corporation models. It includes changes to legislation that would extend the remit of mayoral development corporations, so that they can deliver regeneration and new town development rather than just regeneration. It also allows that separate parcels of land can be designated as one new town area, overseen by one new town development corporation.

The current framework is outdated and not fit for purpose. Each development corporation model was developed to address a specific circumstance at the time of its introduction. This poses a significant risk to the effective delivery of the development corporations. For example, mayoral development corporations can be used only for regeneration projects, as the model was developed initially for London but then widened out to areas outside London, including rural areas. The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill will enable strategic authorities to create more mayoral development corporations, so it is even more important to ensure that the legislation is fit for purpose.

Amendment 195A aims to remove the power permitting new town development corporations

“to do anything necessary or expedient for the purposes or incidental purposes of the new town”.

I reassure the noble Baroness that this is not a new addition to the new town development corporation framework. This provision is already written into primary legislation underpinning new town development corporations, as well as urban development corporation models. The changes to the infrastructure provision include listing specific functions and bringing them in line with mayoral development corporations, with the addition of heat pumps, which have been added to the list of infrastructure that can be delivered by all models.

As development corporations are used to respond to the specific needs of developments or regeneration schemes, it is important that the legislation offers this level of flexibility so that they can be tailored accordingly. We all want to see large-scale developments and infrastructure projects that will support housing and economic growth, but they need to be supported by the right infrastructure without compromising existing provisions. It would be a step backwards if we were to take the power away from new town development corporations and instead provide only a list of infrastructure, as some developments may require new technologies. Decisions to establish development corporations and the powers each will have will be made via regulations. Their oversight will be carefully designed and subject to statutory consultation.

Amendments 351ZA and 362, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, would standardise and extend powers in respect of mayoral development corporations to mayors of all strategic authorities outside London. I welcome his proposal. It is vital that we empower local leaders to transform underused sites to create thriving communities tailored to local needs. For this purpose, mayoral development corporations should be part of every mayor’s toolkit. However, we believe these amendments are unnecessary. The changes the noble Lord is proposing are already being made through the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill introduced on 10 July 2025. Given its scope, that Bill is the most appropriate vehicle for these changes. I take the noble Lord’s point about delay, but I am not under the impression that there is going to be any grass growing under the feet of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill. I think that is going to get moved on at pace and I hope that it will be appropriate for the changes that we are talking about.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

Can the Minister explain who the funder of last resort is when a loss is delivered by a mayoral development corporation? Is it the council tax payer for the geographical area of the development corporation, the combined authority or the Government? To put it another way, who makes up, pays for, a loss if a development corporation makes one?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

Of course, we all hope there will not be a loss, but we must always have provision in place for that. I know that there is ongoing discussion with Sir Michael Lyons and others in the taskforce about how the financial details and programme work, so it is probably best if I reply to noble Lords in writing on that issue.

In relation to the points about capacity, which were very well made, again, discussions are going on with Sir Michael Lyons about how we make all this happen. We have already allocated £46 million to planning, but we will continue to have those discussions with the taskforce about what the delivery mechanisms are to be. That said, I hope that the noble Lord has had some reassurance and that he will agree not to press his amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak also to my Amendments 190 and 192. I welcome the broad thrust of empowering and reinvigorating the development corporations contemplated in the legislation. This is the best part of a complex Bill, although we know that it has already been overtaken by the devolution Bill launched in the other place.

Clause 94 seeks the achievement of sustainable development, and the mitigation of and adaption to climate change, but there would be no sustainable development without commercially sustainable financing of the proposals that the corporations bring forward. My amendment seeks to bring sustainable finance alongside those other sustainability issues. I approach this subject in the knowledge that local authorities may be reorganised and that mayors may be created in what we now learn to be a cat’s cradle of overlapping and competing responsibilities. Regardless of that, the day-to-day financial pressures felt by national and local government have never been greater.

In a former time, development corporations would simply hold out their hand to the Government or local councils for funding. Of course, that route may still be open, but we need to recognise that the old ways, with joint severability between various tiers of local government, are falling away. Building new towns is the work of generations; it goes beyond political cycles. Relying on national and local politicians will not be enough in a world where building a secondary school costs £40 million and a flyover £100 million. In the pursuit of sustainable development and delivery on the plans, the money needs to be right, because without the money, how can all the desirable options in Clause 94 be delivered?

We need to give the development corporations powers to exploit the difference between funding and financing—by explanation, funding is writing the cheque, but financing is putting the deal together. It is no surprise that it is the financiers in the City of London who are the highest paid, because their task of turning those good ideas into reality is the hardest.

Development corporations are independent, but they have the benefit of being able to lean on the covenant strength that comes from being a statutory body. I will not dwell too much on the significance of the governance of development corporations, but I will make the factual observation that strong governance leads to higher covenant strength, the ability to take a higher credit rating, and the willingness of institutional investors to pony up the cash. We need to make it easy for development corporations to raise funds in new and creative ways at the lowest possible coupon. My amendments would path find those.

Get this right and we will provide investable opportunities for pension funds that desire to invest in infrastructure bonds, for local people who want to invest in local facilities that benefit their area, or for sovereign wealth that seeks a home for its money within an advanced economy with well-defined property rights. But the well of wealth from these sources may not be enough, and there may be other ways to skin the cat. The corporations need to be empowered to engage in all manner of financial instruments, including the traditional issuance of bonds, debt or similar instruments. But we should contemplate other sources of finance. That extends to entering into joint ventures with landowners whose land is to be incorporated as an in-kind contribution to the whole, so that they may enjoy the uplift over a long period rather than cash up front. 

It should not be right that development corporations feel they need to reach for the CPO lever by default and then be forced to pony-up a premium price to the owner up front after the unpleasantness of the process—there are lots of “p”s in that sentence. In other words, development corporations need to have powers not just to assemble land but to be creative in the assembly of that land. The creative concept of the joint venture would allow more money to be spent on upfront infrastructure than on land acquisition. That is a better-value enterprise. By thinking creatively like this, the amount of upfront funding will be less and the ability to deliver essential infrastructure at the outset greater. 

 I want to place finance in its widest possible context, not just rooting it in the sort of funding where you stand on the street corner with your hand out. Let us seed these stand-alone corporations away from the other financial pressures that afflict local government and free them from the apron strings of those local authorities. While I accept that the development corporations can plan for an area and have regard to all manner of desirable outcomes, contemplated in Clause 93, ultimately those plans or outcomes will stand or fall on whether the money can be raised and the finance deals put together. That is what my amendments seek to achieve. I beg to move.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, in the absence of other speakers, I am interested in the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, and will be even more interested in the Minister’s response, bearing in mind what I said in the previous group about management of risk and who underpins a development corporation in the event of financial loss.

Amendment 197 is very important. There are two issues: the automatic

“removal of hope value from the valuation of the relevant land”

proposed for development and, secondly, whether land purchases by development corporations should be seen as

“public sector investments to be counted against departmental expenditure limits”.

This amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, is important and I hope that the Minister will respond to it.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Fuller for his amendments. The financing of development corporations is an important issue and we will continue to engage on it. I look forward to the views of Sir Michael Lyons’s task force on the issues raised by noble Lords in this and the previous group on the financial aspects of development corporations.

We need to ensure that financing is long term and sustainable. If corporations are to take on debt to fund infrastructure, they and their lenders will need confidence that the debt will be repaid. This is a particular issue as a current Government cannot bind a future one. I will not comment on the issues in Amendment 197 as it has not been spoken to, but I assume that they will be discussed in group seven.