Paul Holmes MP: speeches

Speeches

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you; that is illuminating and we will take it forward in Committee. Mr Miner, could you elaborate on my question about the NRF element of the legislation? Paul Miner: We had concerns about biodiversity net gain when it was introduced because we felt that it would not lever in as many resources for nature conservation as some of its proponents claimed, and that it would not necessarily deliver strategic benefits. On that basis, we support the principle of a nature restoration fund as something that has the potential for taking a more strategic approach. From our perspective, it is particularly important that the nature restoration fund links well with the Government’s proposed land use framework, which we also support and which we urge the Government to bring in as soon as possible after the consultation finishes. There should also be strong links between the nature restoration fund and the local priorities that are identified in local nature recovery strategies. We have concerns about the detail proposed in the Bill, and in particular about the potential compromising of the well-established mitigation hierarchy: the principle that you should avoid environmental damage before seeking to compensate for or mitigate it. We are also members of Wildlife and Countryside Link, which you will hear from later. We support what it has been saying about the nature restoration fund.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Fine. One very quick question; I am afraid it is to you again, Mr Benwell. I apologise to the other witnesses; it is no reflection at all on your character or expertise. I hope you do not think I am being cheeky by asking this, but a lot of today’s questions from myself, my colleagues and Liberal Democrat colleagues on the Committee have been about the resourcing and the ability of Natural England to undertake the responsibilities that the Secretary of State is proposing. Given your previous role within the Department, working with a Secretary of State, and given your expertise from your current role, do you think that in its current guise Natural England is capable of undertaking the responsibilities outlined in the legislation? Are you worried about the resourcing of that organisation going forward, considering that it will have quite new, detailed and complicated responsibilities? Richard Benwell: There is no doubt that Natural England will need a significant uplift in resourcing to enable it to do this job properly. Natural England was subject to some pretty serious cuts over the last decade, and the last settlement was not very positive for Natural England either, with more job losses coming. When you look into the statistics of Natural England’s funding, some of the increases in recent years have been on capital fund rather than day-to-day spend on the kind of experts we need to do this work out on the ground. Part of the problem sometimes, with the risk aversion surrounding the current incarnation of the habitats regulations, is the lack of expertise from advisers, to give it the confidence to go out and suggest where strategic solutions can happen and to implement the law well. Natural England will definitely need a boost. It is worth noting that it is not even able to fulfil all its current duties to the standard that we would expect. Only half of sites of special scientific interest have been visited in something like the last decade, and Natural England is already having to focus its work on statutory advice for planning applications. It will need more of that expertise, but we have confidence in the organisation and its leadership. We hope that the Government will properly resource Natural England and other agencies to help to make this work if it goes ahead, as amended.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I welcome Rachel and Paul to the Committee. We look forward to questioning you and we thank you for the work that you do. I thank you, Rachel, for the work of the NFU in the longer term, but particularly over the past few months with some of the challenges that farmers across the country are facing because of the Government’s policies. In that vein, may I ask you about a relatively controversial part of the legislation—the Government’s proposals to reform some of the compulsory purchase order powers? Of course, the Opposition will table amendments throughout the process. I know that other Members want to come in, so I will ask you both all my questions and then I will shut up, much to the pleasure of others. What would be the cumulative impact of the proposals on top of some of the other proposals brought in by the Government, particularly in the autumn Budget? Can you outline some of the representations that you have had from your members about what the detailed reforms would mean for the level of payment to people, whether they are tenant farmers or landowning farmers, in relation to CPOs under the Bill? I have another question for you, Mr Miner. In terms of the nature restoration fund, even though the Government claim that there will be no net loss to environmental outcomes as a result of the Bill, is your organisation concerned that it would unintentionally create a patchwork quilt effect, where some areas would essentially have a deterioration in their environmental outcomes compared with other areas in the country? Could you give us a general view of your organisation’s opinion on the nature restoration fund in particular? I will go to the NFU first. Rachel Hallos: Thank you for your question; it is a big one and a very big concern among our members. First, as an organisation, we absolutely welcome measures to modernise the planning system. We all know that it needs to happen. We all know that we need to build and grow, and that our industry also needs to grow. I just want to make it very clear to the Committee that we are in no way saying that this is a bad idea. We see parts of the Bill that we like and parts of it that we dislike, and it will not come as a surprise to any of you that the compulsory purchase element has raised the most concern among our members. Last week, when we brought together our council members, who represent the 44,000 people we have across England and Wales, this was the element that really had them concerned. I completely understand why when we see what has happened in the past, and what is still ongoing with matters such as High Speed 2 and other things around the country. We can break down the compulsory purchase order element into two different things. The first is hope value, which is of real concern to our members. Again, they completely understand that we need to build and grow, and that we need infrastructure in place, because we are woefully behind with it. When you go to somebody’s home or business and lay down the order that you are going to compulsorily purchase it, there has to be fair reward to that person to enable them to rebuild their business or home elsewhere. There is not a lot we can do about it. This is something that can happen to them that is completely out of their control. My members and I genuinely believe that if somebody is going to make commercial gain from the compulsory purchase of that land, or potentially purchases some of it, making the rest of the business unviable, the person having the purchase order served on them should also be commercially rewarded so that they can continue and rebuild their life or business in another place. It is really important that we have that fairness with compulsory purchase orders. The second element, which is the one that really sent shivers, is giving Natural England the power to compulsorily purchase land. I have been sitting at the back and have already heard bats mentioned. We really do not believe that the Committee should vote for this clause to be part of the Bill when the Government have provided so little explanation for why it should be there. We are very concerned about giving Natural England compulsory purchase responsibilities and an ability to do that. It is not just because of bat tunnels—another layer sits behind that. This is about putting environmental goods on hold over here while you build something, but you recreate it over there. Wildlife biodiversity does not have borders or boundaries. It is among us. It might seem strange to you for a farming representative to talk like that, but we genuinely believe that we can deliver food security—you know that good old line, “Food security is national security”—at the same time as enhancing or protecting the environment, or whatever you want to call it. We need to be really, really careful that we ensure that whoever has the powers to compulsorily purchase land—if that is really the route you want to go down—has the capabilities and capacity to do it in the right manner so that there are not losses. That is where our members are. I fully support their stance on that and we feel very, very strongly about it.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q 40 Thank you for coming this afternoon. I am going to speak slightly more slowly than usual, just to try to drag this out, so that we can go and vote, and the Committee can give you the scrutiny and respect that you deserve. I want to ask a question of the Town and Country Planning Association about the level of public trust in the planning system. The Opposition consistently outlined on Second Reading that we are concerned about democratic oversight and the right of the public and local planning committees to have a decent and worthwhile say on the way in which developments are allowed to go ahead in their own remits and jurisdictions. I notice that your written evidence states of public trust: “If the planning system is to be democratic it is essential that the public has a voice during the examination of plans. This includes for the new, and powerful, spatial development strategies”. Could you elaborate on that view and outline to the Committee what amendments you would like to see, or what emphasis you would like changed, to address your concerns in this area? Hugh Ellis: Certainly. There are two aspects to it. One is that public trust is at a very low level. There has not been a full examination of public participation in planning since the late 1960s. Wherever we go, we find people who are struggling to understand the system, very often struggling with the asymmetry when they come up against the development industry, and struggling with the very limited opportunities that communities have to participate. Those opportunities are described in statute both for national infrastructure and for local planning applications; people are given three weeks. The most important thing to stress is that people are not a source of delay; their voice in planning is due process. Taking out democratic opportunities in the cause of speeding up the process is utterly counter- productive, because where communities resist, they create delay anyway—outside the system. For us, there needs to be a respectful conversation. Of course, we are not arguing for a veto; we are arguing for meaningful opportunities for communities to be involved. That leads to better development, more accepted development and better placemaking. Our concerns about the Bill relate particularly to the scheme of delegation and the shortened consultation periods for national infrastructure. To put that right, we are suggesting that things like the scheme of delegation are not really necessary. Certainly, if you are going to do it, you have to preserve local democratic oversight of major decisions at the local level. To give one final quick example, if you have a scheme of delegation that takes out local demographic oversight of decisions, you also take out the community’s only right in development management to be heard as a planning committee. The point I want to stress is that, at the moment, communities are the people largely excluded from decision making, and we want to give them a powerful voice. That is not anti-development; it is about building legitimacy, consent and certainty for development.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Forgive me; I should have asked you, Mrs Henderson. Kate Henderson: No problem. I will not be commenting specifically on what is coming forward from that piece of work. From a National Housing Association perspective, on the principle of new towns, it is worth recognising just how acute housing need is in this country. Right now, we have 160,000 children who are homeless. We have 310,000 children who had to share a bed with a family member last night. The need is acute and spread right across the country. The need for social housing is huge. The Government have set out a very ambitious target of a million and a half homes across the course of this Parliament. We think that about a third of those need to be affordable and social housing. Research that we have commissioned shows that we need around 90,000 social rented homes every year. That is not just in this Parliament but over the course of a decade, to meet the backlog of need. We are a long way off that target, but an important part of it is to have reform, not just of the planning mechanisms and targets within the planning system—and the standard method is an important part of that—but of the resources within the social housing sector, local government and delivery partners to crank up the delivery. That is an important part of the piece, but we are also very much looking forward to the spending review to get a long-term housing strategy in place that also has measures to inject stability, certainty and confidence back into the social housing sector to crank up delivery. James Stevens: I absolutely agree with Kate that it is very important that we do what we can to support affordable housing delivery. The Government’s proposals around spatial development strategies, which would allow those strategies to define policies on affordable housing, would be very beneficial. On the work looking at the section 106 model—which is a current barrier—as Kate said, the Government probably need to invest to ensure that the long-term rent settlement provides more assurance for housing associations in that regard. That is a major obstacle to housing delivery at the moment. In London, for example, that is resulting in a major shortfall in supply. The spatial development strategies should be quite useful mechanisms, so long as they are not too prescriptive. The problem we have with London, as an example, is that it had a very prescriptive affordable housing policy, which did not really last through the economic cycles that we are experiencing at the moment. You need something that is looser fitting and that constituent local authorities can adapt to their own local circumstances.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you very much for coming, and welcome. May I call you Catherine? Catherine Howard: Yes.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Good afternoon, Ministers. It has been nice to see you on the other side of the table. I do not intend to ask many questions, because I think that I should take my responsibilities seriously as shadow Minister in the line-by-line scrutiny of the legislation. The amendments tabled today by the official Opposition will be published tomorrow, and I think that you and your officials should have the right to see those amendments and study them in detail before we go into a detailed debate between the two parties. However, Minister Pennycook, I would like to ask you about a sustained line of questioning that I have taken today. You also participated in the questioning of other witnesses about Natural England, and I think that you and I have a differing opinion—perhaps we do not. Let us see whether we do; I will not do you a disservice. There has been a consistent response from interested stakeholders about the ability and the resourcing of Natural England. You outlined to the witness after the chief executive of Natural England whether that will mean a deterioration or an improvement of environmental factors. I was quite concerned by the chief executive’s representations to the Committee this afternoon, not because of her capability—it is not a slight on her leading of her organisation at all—but because of the language that came back when asked whether her organisation will be able to cope with that. The language was, “we should”, “it might”, “we are not sure yet” and “we need to go through consultations with Government and the Treasury over funding in the spending review”. Some of the reasons outlined by the chief executive were around system changes and improvements that are needed, as well as investment in computer systems and, in the short term, a shortfall in some income because of the lack of certainty from Government. That is not a criticism—that is the natural spending review period. I get that. Can you outline why you do not share the view of many stakeholders: that Natural England’s resourcing needs to be substantially increased, and that the Government need to invest a huge amount to try to get Natural England to a position where it will be able to take on the responsibilities that you are outlining?

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you very much. I am sure the Minister is studying them very carefully, as am I. Would the other two witnesses like to speak on that aspect of the question? You do not need to, if you do not want to. Mike Seddon: indicated dissent. Carol Hawkey: indicated dissent.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q May I suggest that you are a very brave man to talk about the democratic eligibility of councillors when sitting before a Committee full of former councillors? But there we go—that is your rodeo. I have a further question about the role of planning committees. What do you think of the proposal by the Royal Town Planning Institute for a chief planning officer to strengthen officer accountability, in order to tackle some of your perceived drawbacks in the system, such as the number of applications referred to committee and the number that are challenged unfairly? Do you see any advantages in that? Jack Airey: There is certainly a capacity problem in planning committees. Every part of the system is saying that, so it must be true. Does that proposal deal with that directly? I am not sure. Another question was whether we need different layers of planning officers, or whether we need a chief statutory planning officer. I do not know. I think that that is the No. 1 issue. I am being quite neutral on the proposal, because I am not sure that it solves that issue, but there is definitely a capacity issue. Would their being statutory mean that they got more funding in the council? I do not know. I think councils are a bit more complicated than that sometimes.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I come from the school of thought that local authorities generally and genuinely try to do the right things for their local residents and start with trying to deliver change. Looking at the Minister’s new clause 44— “Applications for development consent: removal of certain pre-application requirements”— could you each, within the remits that you have, outline your concerns around removing some of the pre-application requirements, and what the impact might be on your workforce, which is trying to determine what is and is not right for your areas? Do you accept the premise of removing certain pre-application requirements to speed up planning processes? Councillor Hug: Are you referring to new clause 44, not clause 44?

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q We were just in the middle of a response from you, Victoria, on your proposal to bring in a chief planning officer. Because we were voting, would you like to finish the point that you were making, or are you content with what you said before we went? Victoria Hills: Thank you very much. I was making the point that, if you want to mobilise delivery quickly, and if you have gone to the effort of producing a new Bill and getting all the bits and pieces in place that you need to deliver the growth that we know the Government have committed to deliver, it makes sense to have someone with the appropriate level of seniority, experience and competency within local government who can drive forward that delivery. There are a number of changes proposed in the Bill to do planning slightly differently, and within that context, you absolutely need a statutory chief planning officer working with the local politicians to deliver what the communities want to see locally. There is a golden opportunity in the Bill to ensure that we put that role in place in statute so that communities can be assured that, as these changes go through, they have the right level of seniority and competency working with the elected politicians to deliver the changes that they would like to see locally. We support much of what is in the Bill, but we feel that it would be a missed opportunity not to introduce a provision for a statutory chief planning officer. You mentioned that these people exist, but they exist at different levels in different shades in different authorities. Very much along the lines of the conformity that I believe the Bill is trying to bring in for planning committees, if you are going to bring in a new national scheme of delegation for planning committees, you really need a statutory chief planning officer who can deliver that scheme locally, working hand in hand with the politicians to do so.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Just one quick question, which I imagine will be more relevant to Mr Stevens than Mrs Henderson—hello Kate; I do not mean anything bad by that. It has been a long-term feature of this Bill—and has been the case ever since this Government were elected—that we disagree with some of the elements of the Government’s housing target regime, particularly the algorithms and focus of where those housing targets lie within the United Kingdom. It should come as no surprise that I want to ask about new towns. Mr Stevens, the Minister and the Secretary of State have been less than forthcoming about whether they think that new towns should be included within the housing targets across the UK. No answers have come forward. Do you think that new towns should be included, and should they contribute to local authorities’ housing targets? James Stevens: I think that the Government are still thinking through the best way to deal with that. There are provisions in the Bill related to the definition of development management companies and such. As I said, I think the Government are still working it through. On the work of the new towns commission and the identification of new towns, it is the HBF’s view that they should probably not contribute to local authority targets, but be treated as a contingency—a pool to ensure that the housing requirements under the mandatory standard method, which is a major step forward, can be achieved in the event that you get under-bounded cities unable to meet their needs in full. Even if the provisions relating to spatial development strategies come forward, it is still possible that some of them might not be successful in meeting the entirety of the standard method. I think it is probably realistic and would be sensible, as the new Labour Administration did with eco-towns, that they should contribute to filling a national shortfall rather than contributing to local authority targets. That would be my recommendation. We have asked the Government, but as far as I understand, they have not reached a view on that yet.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I think the Minister is being slightly disingenuous about the reforms being proposed by the Government to compulsory purchase orders. At no point did you state that you are simply uncomfortable with the concept of CPO. Could you outline some of your concerns about where the Government are amending the rates at which tenant farmers and landowning farmers are being compensated? What impact will that have on your members, particularly when the rate at which some people are being compensated under future legislation is due to reduce? Rachel Hallos: I am a tenant farmer; my landlord can do as they wish. In reality, I have few rights, so I understand what it is like to be a tenant farmer. If this will change the relationship between a landlord and a tenant, you have a very difficult situation. Of course, the tenant will have only a certain pool of money to take with them elsewhere to go and rent another farm. As we all know, there is not a lot of them there—that will be the difference. It is the practical differences that I am looking at here. I am putting my farmer hat on, which says, “If that happened to us on our farm, where would we go and what would we go with?” We would be in a competitive market trying to get that farm to continue what we do, which is produce food. As many of you may know, not all farms are the same. That is the farmer answer for you, putting myself in those shoes.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you for being more concise in your answer than I was in my question—apologies. Very briefly, what interaction and engagement have you had with the Treasury in your representations? Have you made representations to the Treasury? What has it said to your request for more resourcing, and have you had any early indication of the Treasury’s thoughts on the spending review and the need for Natural England to have increased funding? Matthew Pennycook: I fully appreciate and have no issue with you trying, shadow Minister, but I am not going to make any comment on the ongoing spending review negotiations.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is your fault then. Councillor Wright: I have lived in hope that we get clarity on purpose and policy. At the moment, we have far too many policies all coming through at the same time. For instance, the conflict between LGR spatial development plans—it is chicken and egg, and seems to have come at the wrong time. I have spent the last few months explaining to residents that, because of the huge conflagration of policies at the moment, we have policies that we do not think will achieve what they should. For instance, I refer to the 1.5 million permissions that will be put in place because there is not a single tool in anything we have seen so far that will compel builders to build. We have that on one side, and now we are having to explain to people that, alongside that, they will no longer have a voice in the planning system if some of these policies go through. This has all been swallowed up. Perhaps the attention of some people in the local authority could rightly be on local government reform and devolution when, really, we need to see this in the round. There are so many policies coming through—conflicting policies and policies that we think are only part-finished. Some of them could achieve a lot of what we want to see and do, and what our residents want to see, but at the moment it is such a hodgepodge that it is very difficult to follow and to see where the concentration needs to be. Councillor Clewer: From the county’s point of view, I think you are raising some valid points. Having been through unitarisation, it is extremely disruptive. You are placing an awful lot on districts and counties that are going through that and creating new authorities to then make them look at planning reform of this level of significance. Planning was one of the hardest areas to get into the new unitaries. We still struggle with it 16 years on. It has proved really challenging because of the local, granular impact that planning has. If you then want to look at the issue around the spatial plans, when some of us do not have mayors, or even mayoral geographies, I have no idea how we are meant to be talking with equal voices to create spatial delivery plans when we have that hodgepodge. At the very least, we have to know our mayoral geographies to be able to make any headway in coming up with a meaningful plan. Honestly, without the mayors, and the authority, funding and the voice to central Government that comes with them, it will put everyone else at risk. That really concerns me. It creates the ability for mayors, perhaps in metropolitan areas, to push development into more rural areas when the rural areas do not have the voice and the same ability to express their challenges and concerns. You need the granularity to understand the impact of planning on the local level.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Yes.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Councillors, for being here. I put on record that many Committee members are former or still serving councillors.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Welcome to the Committee, Mr Airey and Mr Richards. Thank you for your time and sorry to keep you waiting; I hope the questions are worth it. As you know, the Opposition were consistently concerned throughout the Second Reading debate—we asked previous witnesses questions on this—about the perceived democratic deficit in the future planning system should some of the measures go through, particularly those on national schemes of delegation and on statutory consultees and changes to the consultation process. Mr Airey, do you think this legislation will remove local people’s right to make representations and make an impact, to the extent that they currently can, on local planning decisions? Jack Airey: First, we start from a very low base of democratic engagement in the planning system. Very few people engage in planning applications or the planning process, and often the people who do are not representative of their local area. The No. 1 thing we could do is to increase that participation and get a much wider range of people involved in having a say in planning. That is my primary concern. On a national scheme of delegation, it all depends on the detail that the Government provide later and how it is implemented through regulations. In the context that I set out, I am not too worried about a perceived loss of democratic oversight, because I feel like it is so low. It would be remiss of me not to note that councillors who are on planning committees are often elected with very small mandates, given the very low turnouts in local elections, so in my view we start from a very low position in respect of people having the right say in what they should be doing. It would be no bad thing if the intent of the reform that comes forward is to reduce the number of schemes that planning committees reject for nakedly political reasons. It is no way to regulate a major part of our economy—the construction industry. It creates lots of uncertainty for developers and for communities, and ultimately it means fewer things get built and much less growth happens than should. Often, councils lose millions of pounds having to fight appeals that a developer is bound to win because it has put forward a scheme that is compliant with a local plan but has been rejected for reasons that are, in my view, quite odd a lot of the time. If the reform that the Government eventually bring forward begins to deal with that, it will be very worth while, but the threshold for delegation will have to be set in a way that removes as much ambiguity as possible so that planning officers do not always feel the need to direct every single application to a committee, because every application will be controversial to someone.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you, Catherine. The Minister and I have regularly been on Committees in the House where we—the Conservative party—agree with the Government’s proposals over planning fees. We have been on many Committees together where we have not contested those. Could you elaborate on how helpful you think the Government’s proposals on ring-fencing and planning fees are, how prescriptive you find them and whether they could be improved? Could you also outline how you think the proposal could help the speediness of planning applications, but also have a greater impact on local government’s workforce challenges in recruiting and holding on to planning experts? Do you think the legislation will allow local authorities to have enough funding to keep town planners in local authority town halls and not going off to private companies? Catherine Howard: The way the legislation is drafted, it looks to me like it is highly prescriptive and will be very effective at ringfencing. It talks about the need to secure that the income from the fees or charges is applied towards the carrying out of the functions that are listed. Those are functions such as dealing with planning applications, certificates of lawfulness, tree applications and listed buildings. There are things it does not deal with—that is presumably deliberate—such as general enforcement and plan making. It seems to me that, the way it is drafted, you could not use the money from all of those developer application fees and just apply it to plan making and those kind of functions. If that is the intention, that is what it appears to achieve. Regarding recruitment, I know that fee recovery has been put into law in a number of different planning regimes. I am more of a specialist in the national infrastructure regime, where those provisions have been added quite liberally. It will be interesting to see how effective a pay-as-you-go system is. My concern still, in terms of how effective that will be at recruitment and retention, is that I do not know how much flexibility statutory authorities will have to set public pay scales. I would have thought—I am not an expert in this area—that if you want to attract and keep people who are otherwise tempted to go off to the private sector where pay seems to be higher, particularly with supply and demand the way that it is, you will need to make the applicable pay scales higher. I am not sure that the fees that are attracted by a developer can just be used to give people bonuses or higher salaries within the private sector. That is my concern. If the fees can somehow be used to recruit and retain more people within planning authorities, that must be a good thing. It seems to me that there has been more of a drain of talent out of the local authorities and all of the public sector authorities and regulators post Covid in particular, now that people can work from home. Some of the benefits of working with slightly more flexibility, which the public sector was always better at than the private sector, have slightly gone. I imagine there is more of an inducement for people to move across if they are being offered more money, so I recognise the problem.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Despite some of our earlier witnesses’ words about the democratic mandate of councillors, I respect what you do, so thank you very much. I will ask two mainstream questions: first, around some of the Government’s wider reforms, which in some cases the Opposition welcome, particularly around local government reform and the advent of new mayoralties—combined authority mayoralties. Do you think that undertaking a huge amount of work in terms of planning reform should come before we have seen the advancement of the reforms under local government reorganisation and mayoralties? In any area in the legislation, are you concerned that some of the intended consequences of the planning reforms will not be able to be delivered as they should, because we do not have the reforms to local government, which will fundamentally impact outcomes in the longer term? Councillor Hug: Obviously, the Government are trying to do multiple things at once—that is the case for all Governments at all times on all things; the world does not stand still. The challenge for this piece of legislation, and everything else, is to try to build in the scope to evolve once the overall picture of local government reform is complete. There is quite some way to go on that in different parts of the country. I am speaking from a part of the country that is not currently in that round of discussions yet. At the heart of it, the local plan has an important role, which we want to make sure is there in any new strategic set-up that is created, and that local councillors have a say. We want to make sure that, whatever core tier there is of local government, it has the ability to work with the new strategic mayoral authority in a collaborative and productive way so that both tiers are working in a partnership, which clearly recognises that the new role has been brought in by the Government and the importance of local councillors and local communities, which understand how to meet some of those strategic objectives in an effective way at a local level. It is about making sure that we are looking to build a partnership approach through any local government reform, and looking at how that then impacts on the planning agenda.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Welcome to the Committee, and thank you for your time this afternoon. I only have one question—I mean no detriment to you guys, but we have recycled some of the themes and I know that Back-Bench Members want to ask questions, too, so I will be quick. We have had a lot of conversation and heard a lot of evidence about the nature restoration fund element of the legislation, as well as some concerns—for example, in my constituency from the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust and other organisations—about the nature restoration fund, and about other elements such as EDPs and Natural England’s ability to manage them. Are you confident that, under the Bill as drafted, nowhere in the country that is affected by the NRF or an EDP will see a reduction in environmental standards? Will this Bill in fact do what it attempts to outline, which is to increase environmental standards across the United Kingdom? Richard Benwell: Thank you for having me. Quickly, to deal first with the question of whether nature is a blocker—that has come up a lot today—it is an absurd notion to suggest that it is the fault of nature or environmental regulations that we are not getting the infrastructure development that the Government want or the renewables infrastructure development that we want. It is worth noting that Natural England reckons that 99% of the housing applications that it is consulted on go through perfectly properly; only 1% receive objections on the basis of environmental concerns. It is also worth noting that what you heard earlier—that the vast majority of major infrastructure projects are JR-ed because of environmental concerns—is both misrepresentation and factually inaccurate. There has been a recent spike, yes, but the long-term trend is that only 10% of major infrastructure projects are challenged. Lots of them go through the paper permission stage and have been found to have merits. It is important not to get drawn into that sense that nature and development are at odds; they can proceed perfectly well together. The question is how to do that. We think that the Government are genuinely on to something—that there are ways to speed up development and allow developers to meet their environmental obligations more quickly and more simply, at the same time as helping to restore nature. We know that the planning system needs to do more to restore nature, so that aspiration for a win-win is a good one. To return to your question, however, we think that at the moment, as the Bill is drafted, that is not what will be on the page of the law—what is here now would represent a regression in the strength of environmental law. The situation at the moment is a high degree of certainty about the environmental results that are supposed to result from environmental law. That is being swapped, frankly, for a lot of wishful thinking in the way that the Bill is framed. The Bill would allow developers to pay a levy to discharge their environmental responsibilities, and then, through legislative sleight of hand and some magical legal jiggery-pokery, that would be replaced with a lot of subjective opinion in how results are judged. The mitigation hierarchy would be lost, so the expectation to avoid harm would be short-circuited. We would be in a situation where damage could happen now in return for promises of future environmental improvements that are very loosely measured under the Bill. At the moment, developers are expected to pay fully for environmental results, but the Bill sets out a situation where developers may pay only part of the costs of remediation, and that is subject to a viability test. In the Bill, the Government are putting a lot of reliance on the idea of an overall improvement test, whereby the Secretary of State is allowed to bring in an environmental delivery plan if it is likely to lead to measures that will outweigh the harm to nature. That “likely to” test is a much lower legal bar of certainty than the one we have at the moment, where you need a high degree of scientific certainty that the environmental measures will actually lead to results. It is worth emphasising that I understand why a lot of people want to immediately pause part 3 of the Bill. We are in an ecological crisis, with 19% of species abundance lost since 1970 in the UK—32% in England—and one in six species at risk of extinction. To mess with our most important nature laws is a really risky thing to do. What I would much rather see is the law being amended in Committee and through this process, so that the win-win the Government have rightly identified—that, actually, we can better spend some of the developer money to lead to bigger, better projects for nature restoration, at the same time as speeding up development—can be achieved. We have some proposals for how the Bill could be amended in some quite simple but important ways to bring that mitigation hierarchy back in, to achieve surety of results and to make sure that polluters really do pay for harm. I would love to talk through those with the Committee.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q The Opposition absolutely agree with you on that, and we appreciate your frankness in your written representations to this Committee. Continuing with this line of questioning on local planning authorities and their powers with democratic oversight, one of your interesting proposals, Victoria, is an amendment that would allow for a statutory chief planning officer per local planning authority. I find that particularly interesting because I can see the argument that you would have increased legitimacy with one planning officer per local planning authority, despite the fact that we already have those, as there would be one person within each authority who is vested with the power to make those decisions. Can you outline how you see that working with the political structures that are in place in local authorities, bearing in mind what we would argue are the legislative aims of the Bill in removing some of those powers from locally elected councillors and politicians? Victoria Hills: You are absolutely right; one of our core asks, which we believe would be a pillar of the quite systemic change being introduced by the Bill, is to have a statutory chief planning officer in every local authority. If you want to drive innovation, change, and the delivery of a new planning system, with the Bill setting an ambitious drumbeat for how planning will be done going forward, then to mobilise that delivery, you need to ensure that you have the appropriate seniority, experience and professional competency of a senior executive leader, rather than an elected leader. They can work with the elected politicians locally to drive forward delivery of the planning reform that is before this Committee. We feel that many of the changes proposed in the Bill, some of which are quite structural about the way that planning will be done differently in the future, require not only strong elected leadership but strong executive leadership. [Interruption.]

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  By the way, don’t apologise. You are perfectly entitled, as every other witness is, to give your view on this piece of legislation. I would say, however, that the Minister is absolutely correct that there were some hope value reforms under the last Government, and I was not here— Rachel Hallos: I accept that.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  That is very clear—thank you very much.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  I didn’t think you would. Thank you.