National Planning Policy Framework

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness once again for the work she did in championing the cause of ancient woodlands, including organising a visit for the two of us to somewhere east of Newark-on-Trent. That sounds like an Alistair MacLean novel. It was a very useful visit, and I am glad we have been able to do something in that regard.

The noble Baroness welcomed the viability test. On the housing targets that she talked about, so that housing authorities do not feel that they have to deliver homes of substandard quality, let us say, because of having to reach the numbers, we have made the importance of design integral to the NPPF. As a nation, we have not been imaginative enough on this but, of course, we need to be realistic about the demands placed on local authorities. They can work on common ground with neighbouring authorities, for example, to deliver. They are obliged to look at brownfield first; we do not want them to use green-belt land, except as very much a last resort, and that has to be justified, just as it does now. All the safeguards are there, but it is something we will watch like hawks.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, quality is important and has perhaps been somewhat set aside in the Statement made so far. The homes that we build next year will still be here in 2030 and 2050, when the Climate Change Act and the sustainable development goals kick in. Is the apparent weakening of the new-build sustainability criteria in the draft NPPF just infelicitous, accidental wording, or does it represent a change in government policy?

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, the noble Lord will be reassured to hear that quality is very much central to our thinking; it is one of the things that we are very proud of in the NPPF—that we have got that there. It is something that, as a nation, as I say, we have fallen down on before. We have quite separately from the Statement, as he will know, promoted self-build, which is normally associated with higher quality by its very nature. In the Chancellor’s recent Statement, made before Christmas, we provided help for smaller builders, which again is often associated with better quality. We are also doing what we can to promote pre-build modular design, which used to be called prefabs and are now of a very significant design quality. Those things will help to ensure that we deliver far better quality and consistent quality, knowing, as the noble Lord said, that these homes are here for generations and more.