Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Neil Duncan-Jordan Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 9th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Lewis Cocking]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and of course I agree. She makes an important point, and I fully support her new clause. I know she is a keen advocate for this provision in her constituency; it is about creating communities. As I have said, this Government are interested only in hitting a national target, which I and lot of experts in the industry do not think they will meet.

The Government need to think about how they are going to create the communities of the future and the places where people want to live. That means designing them to be really nice, getting developers around the table and agreeing design codes, and making sure developers really put their money where their mouth is. We should ensure we have tree-lined streets, because when we go out in our constituency, as I am sure you do in yours, Madam Deputy Speaker, a tree-lined street is absolutely beautiful to walk down. It is so much better for the people living there and everybody in the constituency if we make that a reality for lots of our residents. Rather than just focusing on building a set number of houses, we should focus on creating the communities of the future and the places where our constituents want to live.

[Neil Duncan-Jordan (Poole) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in favour of amendment 69 and new clause 32, which were both tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff). I commend him for his work on the Bill.

I believe the Government have got it wrong with their changes to nature protection. I appreciate that Ministers will say that they come from a genuine desire to address the housing crisis, but the Bill removes the foundations of our nature laws, including the mitigation hierarchy that requires developers to avoid harm. Nearly every major conservation group opposes the Bill and the Government watchdog, the Office for Environmental Protection, says that it degrades nature protections.

Amendment 69 offers practical improvements, ensuring that environmental delivery plans achieve their stated purpose of making developers pay to offset damage to nature. It ensures that plans result in an improvement to the specific feature being harmed, so that the Bill does not give a green light to degrading irreplaceable habitats.

[James Naish (Rushcliffe) (Lab)]

The Wild Justice “Lost Nature” report, which was produced by a team including my excellent constituent Sarah Postlethwaite, reveals that housing developers are frequently failing on their legally binding ecological commitments. Its survey of 42 new housing developments, including two in my constituency, shows that only half the ecological enhancements promised, including hedgehog highways, bird boxes, bat boxes and planted trees, were actually being delivered. Does my hon. Friend agree that, while trusting developers’ promises, we must take up-front steps to empower and expand Natural England and other authorities to hold them to account?

[Neil Duncan-Jordan]

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree.

Amendment 69 also mandates that improvements be delivered before harm occurs. Without that, we risk species being pushed closer to extinction before their habitats are replaced. Worst of all, the Bill still will not deliver the affordable homes we desperately need.

[Dan Tomlinson]

The explanatory statement to amendment 69 states:

“This amendment would require Environmental Delivery Plans to set out a timetable for, and thereafter report on, conservation measures, and require improvement of the…status…before development takes place in areas where Natural England”—

thinks there could be harm. How long does my hon. Friend think that that would take in the case of nutrient neutrality and a developer who wanted to build a new social home?

[Neil Duncan-Jordan]

I do not have a specific answer to that point. I cannot give my hon. Friend an answer to that.

The Government’s own impact assessment provided no data that environmental protections are a blocker. Nature in the Bill is being scapegoated to distract from a broken developer-led model.

[Sean Woodcock]

We have heard a lot about the failure of developers to build infrastructure, protect nature and provide enough social housing. Does that not just show that the status quo is broken, and why the Bill is so important and heading in the right direction?

[Neil Duncan-Jordan]

The current system is broken, absolutely, but I do not think that hard-pressed planning officers are the problem. I think developers are the problem, and that is the point that I am coming on to make.

Last year, less than 2% of new homes were social rents delivered through the planning system. Private developers prioritise maximum profit with high-end luxury builds, particularly in constituencies such as mine. At the current rate, we would need to build over 5 million homes to deliver just 90,000 social rent properties, yet there are over 1 million people on waiting lists. That is why I signed new clause 32 to introduce binding quotas for affordable and social rent homes. If we are serious, as I believe Labour is, about getting families out of temporary accommodation and off waiting lists, local authorities need the power and funding to lead a new generation of council house building.

We also cannot ignore the fact that the developer-led model creates conflict with nature, as under-resourced councils are forced to accept whatever sites developers propose, regardless of how suitable or unsuitable they are for sustainable development. There is no amount of killing badgers or red tape bonfires that will fix that. It is too simplistic to argue that this is a debate of builders versus blockers. The overwhelming majority of planning applications are approved, which is why we had more than a million planning permissions approved in the past decade that have yet to be built. Developers continue to drip feed developments into the system, prioritising properties that maximise profit and are far from affordable for local people.

It is time, therefore, to move away from the failed market dogma and, I believe, to return to Labour values. The post-war Labour Government built millions of homes supported by the planning system our party created, and it is time we did it again.

[Wendy Morton]

I rise to speak to new clause 84, in my name, and to add my support for new clause 51 on solar and battery energy storage systems, and new clause 39 on solar.

New clause 84 seeks to prohibit the development of battery energy storage systems on higher-quality agricultural land. In a debate on this topic in this Chamber just last week, we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Sarah Bool) that there is 78 GW of battery capacity that is either operational, awaiting construction having received planning permission or awaiting consideration, which is equal to supplying 200 million homes—10 times the number of houses we actually have. This is ludicrous.

There are numerous questions over safety, fire risk, accessibility and proximity to homes and communities, yet these storage systems are replacing land that could be used for crops and grazing for animals with metal containers, eating into our national food security at a time that we should be increasing food security and strengthening our food chains. Farmland, as we all know in this place, is irreplaceable—when it is gone, it is gone. We are seeing far too many planning applications coming forward that would risk green-belt land being trashed, with the term “grey belt” used to create a grey area that planning inspectors will take advantage of. I hope the Government are listening to this point, and those made by others on solar, as well.

In the time I have, I want to support a number of other new clauses and amendments that I know matter to my constituents, such as new clause 79, on the duty to co-operate. It is not that we do not expect to have targets in constituencies such as mine; we just do not expect to do all the heavy lifting. We do not expect to have to pick up the can and let failing authorities such as Labour-led Birmingham off the hook. The council certainly cannot manage Birmingham’s bins and it cannot manage its housing, either; three years on, none of the properties in the Commonwealth village in Perry Barr has been let.

It cannot be right that housing targets in areas like Birmingham and London are being placed on authorities such as Walsall, where our targets are being hiked up— not least when evidence points to more people wanting to live in towns and centres. Surely what we should be doing is regenerating these areas and building on our brownfield. If we do it sensibly, it will protect the green belt, protect our environment and protect the green and open spaces that we all love and enjoy.

I will also speak in support of new clause 45, on intentional unauthorised development, something that really irks some of my constituents. They write to me and come to see me about developers or individuals who flagrantly breach or ignore planning regulation or permissions, creating misery for their neighbours. How can someone simply get away with doing that sort of thing without repercussions, when others abide by the rules and are left picking up the pieces?

I have already spoken of my support for new clause 43 on preventing the merging of villages. That is crucial to constituencies like mine, which is on the edge of Birmingham, and has communities that are at risk of being consumed into its urban sprawl. Finally, there is so much I could say on Natural England. I worry that the Government are giving more powers over planning to an unelected quango, while taking power away from local authorities and councillors.