Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the potential connection between (a) street and (b) ambient lighting and the incidence of burglaries.

My Department has made no such assessment. The National Planning Policy Framework sets out the need to create safe and accessible environments where crime and disorder, and the fear of crime, do not undermine quality of life or community cohesion.

Planning Practice Guidance provides further advice on how to design out crime and design in community safety and that this should be central to the planning and delivery of new development.

The prevention of crime and the enhancement of community safety are matters that a local authority should consider when exercising its planning functions under the Town and Country Planning legislation.